Date: December 5, 2017
Source: University of Washington
Summary:
An interdisciplinary team is
using a covert sound-based approach, worthy of an avian CSI, to study the link
between crows' calls and their behavior.
What are crows saying when their
loud cawing fills a dark winter's evening? Despite the inescapable ruckus,
nobody knows for sure. Birds congregate daily before and after sleep, and they
make some noise, but what might be happening in those brains is a mystery.
Curious about these raucous
exchanges, researchers at the University of Washington Bothell are listening
in. They are placing equipment on the roof of their building -- a meeting place
for some of the thousands of crows that sleep in nearby campus trees -- and
using a sort of computerized eavesdropping to study the relationship between
calls and the birds' behavior.
"With audio alone, our team
is able to localize and record the birds remotely, and in dim light that makes
this situation less suitable for video tracking," said Shima Abadi, an
assistant professor at UW Bothell's School of Science, Technology, Engineering
& Mathematics. "It's still a challenging task, but we can use the
audio signals to look for patterns and learn more about what the birds may be
communicating."
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