Good morning, Newdists. It’s Saturday again. Finally. What a week! You ever have weeks where you begin to need the weekend from Tuesday? Yeah.
Did you watch The Benny and Liz Show on Thursday night? It was riveting. Looking forward to the next one.
Also —
I hope these hearings will make people vote in the midterms. My plan is to vote Blue, as I always do.
Baby birds babble to themselves and repeat bird sounds from adults and fellow baby birds:
"It's kind of a tossed salad of just about everything that the birds have heard up to that stage in their life," said biologist Karl Berg, part of the team who made the discovery. "It would be like if you just opened a dictionary and started rattling off words."
The scientists worked with green-rumped parrotlets, which, much like other parrot species, are known to be vocal learners who mimic the noises around them. The babbling noises began when the parrotlets were around 21 days old, and researchers counted 27 different calls, such as soft peeps, clicks and growling noises.
The behaviour hadn't been seen before, mostly because baby parrots tend to do it when no adults are around, and they do it very quietly, often without even fully opening their beaks.
"Often it's the eldest nestling that's into its babbling stage and the [other babies] kind of fall asleep," said Berg, an associate professor in biology at University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.
"It's kind of sweet. It's almost like he or she sings them to sleep."
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I hope to watch this at some point —
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space junk
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Newdists, please grab a cuppa and something to eat, and join us in the thread.
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New Day Cafe is an Open Thread.
What do you want to talk about today?
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