Nothing has a voicebox quite like
a bird's, but cats, mice, and crocs show some similarities
Date: September 24, 2018
Source: Field Museum
Summary:
Birds' voiceboxes are in their
chests instead of their throats like mammals and reptiles. Scientists aren't
sure how or why birds evolved these unique voiceboxes, but a new study sheds
some light on how they came about. Similarities in the windpipes of birds,
crocodiles, cats, mice, and salamanders suggest that birds' weird voiceboxes
might have arisen from a windpipe reinforcement. From this, scientists can learn
about the sounds bird ancestors -- dinosaurs -- made.
Birds sing from the heart. While
other four-limbed animals like mammals and reptiles make sounds with voiceboxes
in their throats, birds' chirps originate in a unique vocal organ called the
syrinx, located in their chests. No other animals have a syrinx, and scientists
aren't sure how or when it evolved. In a new study in the Proceedings of
the Natural Academy of Science, an interdisciplinary team of developmental
biologists, evolutionary morphologists, and physiologists examined the
windpipes of birds, crocodiles, salamanders, mice, and cats to learn more about
how syrinxes evolved. Their findings seem to confirm: the syrinx is an
evolutionary odd duck. But it might have arisen from a reinforcement at the
bottom of the windpipe that we still see in many other animals.
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