Section 02
New Science
Landmark new studies in behavior and evolution, translated for curious readers.
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01
5 min
New Science
Birdsong Has an Alphabet, and It Is Only Eight Letters Long
A landmark analysis of 116,000 recordings from 3,160 songbird species finds that the planet's dizzying variety of song is built from just eight acoustic building blocks. In addition, habitat and sexual selection determine which ones each bird uses.