Wrens Teach Eggs to Sing

Mothers usually set about teaching their offspring the moment they’re born. But the females of one Australian bird can’t wait that long.

Superb fairy-wren (Malurus cyaneus) mothers sing to their unhatched eggs to teach the embryo inside a ‘password’ — a single unique note — which the nestlings must later incorporate into their begging calls if they want to get fed.

The trick allows fairy-wren parents to distinguish between their own offspring and those of the two cuckoo species that frequently invade their nests. The female birds also teach their mates the password.

Fairy-wrens were known to discriminate against cuckoo nestlings on the basis of their foreign begging calls, says Sonia Kleindorfer, an animal behaviorist at Flinders University in Adelaide, who led the work. But it wasn’t known that wren nestlings learned the passwords before hatching.

“It has never been shown before that there is actually learning in the embryo stages,” says Kleindorfer. The finding, published today in Current Biology, has the potential to open up new lines of enquiry into prenatal learning in systems other than parasite-host relationships and in other animals — it could occur anywhere where it’s a benefit, she adds.

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