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I don't know the goings on in the brains of dinosaurs, but it has been established that our feathered friends possess the kinds of mirror neurons that allow them to imitate other birds, and and Martin indicates, chain saws, car alarms, etc. We imitate each other and ourselves (there is a neural pathway between the Broca and Wernicke areas of the brain--speech and language understanding pathways respectively). So it should not be a stretch for many different birds to parrot us. Starlings do it too:
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b10_1224333974
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On Aug 20, 2011, at 8:25 AM, Martin Weiss wrote:
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> Charlie
>
> We do know the mechanism of how dinosaur vocalizations evolved to present day bird songs: natural selection even though we do not have the details. And I suspect that linguists have a good understanding of how Latin " lives" in other languages today just as Gene's grandparents live in his living relatives.
>
> I am not sure that parrots' ability to emulated human sounds is specifically due to convergent evolution or just to the ability and "need" for some birds to imitate. For example the Lyre bird is famous, almost notorious, for its ability to imitate bird songs, camera motor drives, lawn mowers; almost anything it hears in addition to other bird songs. It maybe that some birds, parrots and Lyre birds for example, can imitate as an offshoot of other adaptations they have evolved over time.
>
> Interesting segue of the original discussion.
>
>
> Martin
>
>
> Sent from my iPad
> Martin Weiss
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> On Aug 19, 2011, at 6:41 PM, Charlie Carlson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
>> Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
>> *****************************************************************************
>>
>> Hi Wendy,
>>
>> Latin as a dead language was one of my great childhood myths. Thanks for
>> your comments.
>>
>> Thinking about it, though I like the analogy, the metaphor doesn't quite
>> work. True enough, birds are derived from dinosaurs and modern day bird
>> songs are probably derived from ancient "dinosaur languages." I suspect no
>> bird likely speaks dinosaur anymore (though we don't have those dinosaur
>> recordings), and bird is in use today, variable and changing and a living
>> collection of songs, dialects and languages. How they might trace back to
>> dinosaur is an intriguing question.
>>
>> In some species of birds, parrots most notably the convergent evolutionary
>> pressures have results in remarkable similarities to human speech as best we
>> can tell––as well as corresponding neural and behavioral flexibility, or *vice
>> versa*.
>>
>> All the best,
>> Charlie
>> --
>> Charles Carlson
>> Senior Scientist
>> Exploratorium
>> 3601 Lyon St.
>> San Francisco, CA 94123
>>
>> (415) 561-0319
>>
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