Obviously, birds sing. But mice? [Mice song sound.] That’s a
mouse song. Researchers have known about these high-pitched
squeaky songs for years. But they only recently discovered that
mice can learn the songs of other mice. Such vocal learning is a
rarity among animals. We know of only three kinds of
birds—parrots, hummingbirds and songbirds—and some mammals—like
humans, whales, dolphins, sea lions, bats and elephants—that
have demonstrated the ability to learn the vocal patterns of
other animals. That is, until now. Scientists at Duke University
observed that when two male mice of different lineages were kept
together, the animals gradually learned to match the pitch of
their songs to one another. And when the researchers examined
the mice, they found that the rodents can also form the correct
brain-to-vocal-cord connections to control the sounds they make.
The research is published in the journal PLoS ONE. [Gustavo
Arriaga, Eric P. Zhou and Erich D. Jarvis, Of Mice, Birds, and
Men: The Mouse Ultrasonic Son