'Most of the city is evacuating': Gridlock on Alberta highway after evacuation order in Fort McMurray
Four Fort McMurray neighbourhoods were ordered to evacuate on Tuesday as a wildfire gets closer to the city.
Humans have long made playlists to express their love towards a potential partner, and new research suggests some birds not only do the same, but can rotate the order.
Male song sparrows, found throughout North America, use their tweets to attract mates. Previous research suggests the sparrows can have up to 12 two-second songs in their repertoire, which they repeat a few times before moving on to the next song.
This "cycle" of songs acts like a playlist and can last for up to 30 minutes. Once it is over, the sparrows will change the order of the songs in the playlist each time it is sung.
What was not previously known is whether or not this re-ordering of the playlist was "by accident or design," according to a Duke University post on the research by Stephen Nowicki, a biologist at the university, which was published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B this week.
In order to collect the data needed to answer this question, Nowicki's research partner William Searcy, an ornithologist and biologist at the University of Miami, hiked into the backwoods of northwest Pennsylvania with equipment to record hours of the birds' songs.
The research team took these songs and plotted them visually, looking to identify each song, how often it was sung, and in what order.
This analysis indicated that male song sparrows keep track of their tweets intentionally, as the males generally sing through their entire repertoire before repeating any of their songs. It also indicated that the longer the sparrows sing a particular two-second song, the longer they would wait before singing it again.
Both of these findings suggest that sparrows actually design their playlists, rather than randomly cycle through their songs. It also suggests that song sparrows have “long-distance dependencies,” or a rare talent for memory. If what a sparrow sings depends on what he sang 30 minutes ago, then that is a 360-times larger memory capacity than the next longest memory capacity found in birds. The canary can only remember up to the last five to 10 seconds of its playlist.
The results also suggest that the song sparrow could have a strong "generative grammar" to its tweets. Generative grammar, or "universal grammar," is a theory usually attributed to American linguist Noam Chomsky. The theory states that human language is shaped by certain structures and rules innate in the brain.
The possible presence of long-distance dependencies and generative grammar could mean that the communication between song sparrows is closer to human syntax than originally thought. This combination, according to Nowicki's study, has "not previously been described in any animal signalling system."
What is less clear is whether or not this increases the male song sparrow's odds at finding a mate over other songbirds.
Four Fort McMurray neighbourhoods were ordered to evacuate on Tuesday as a wildfire gets closer to the city.
Saskatchewan RCMP have revealed that a historic sexual assault investigation has led to the discovery of alleged crimes against children dating back to 2005.
Less than a week after two public sculptures featuring a livestream between Dublin, Ireland, and New York City debuted, 'inappropriate behaviour' in real-time interactions between people in the two cities has prompted a temporary shutdown.
After a final frame that saw the visiting Vancouver Canucks claw their way back and tie the game late, a point shot by Oilers defenceman Evan Bouchard with 38 seconds left (until what seemed like certain overtime) iced the 3-2 victory for Edmonton to knot the series.
Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker railed against Pride month, working women, President Biden's leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic and abortion during a commencement address at Benedictine College last weekend.
King Charles III has unveiled the first portrait of the monarch completed since he assumed the throne, a vivid image that depicts him in the bright red uniform of the Welsh Guards against a background of similar hues.
The annual list of Canada's top restaurants in the country was just released and here are the places that made the 2024 cut.
The province has released more information on its plan to break up Alberta Health Services and replace it with four sector-based health agencies.
The Biden administration has told key lawmakers it is sending a new package of more than US$1 billion in arms and ammunition to Israel, two congressional aides said Tuesday.
A team is ready to help an entangled North Atlantic right whale in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
A $200 reward is being offered by a North Vancouver family for the safe return of their beloved chicken, Snowflake.
Two daughters and a mother were reunited online 40 years later thanks to a DNA kit and a Zoom connection despite living on three separate continents and speaking different languages.
Mother's Day can be a difficult occasion for those who have lost or are estranged from their mom.
YES Theatre Young Company opened its acclaimed kids’ show, One Small Step, at Sudbury Theatre Centre on Saturday.
An Ottawa pizzeria is being recognized as one of the top 20 deep-dish pizzas in the world.
A family of fifth generation farmers from Ituna, Sask. are trying to find answers after discovering several strange objects lying on their land.
A Listowel, Ont. man, drafted by the Hamilton Tigercats last week, is also getting looks from the NFL, despite only playing 27 games of football in his life.
The threat of zebra mussels has prompted the federal government to temporarily ban watercraft from a Manitoba lake popular with tourists.