Zebrafinch Courtship Remix

A friend of mine works on zebra finches. Specifically, she works on the neurological circuits they produce in order to learn, create, and change songs. Zebra finches are really cool. They are a model species for working on neuroethology, the field which investigates the role of the nervous system in animal behaviour. By studying the learning of birdsong in zebra finches we can learn a lot about how experience can change the brain. For instance, zebra finches are able to learn songs even when deafened, showing that their ability to sing is genetically encoded rather than learned through experience growing up listening to other birds sing. Very neat.

I had a day full of waiting today, waiting for antibodies, waiting for slides to wash, waiting for embryos to fix, lots of waiting. So I got her to send me some zebra finch audio and made this…. thing.

I don’t really know how to describe this other than “biological trap”.

The thing is that zebra finches have VERY non-musical songs. Basically, it just sounds like a jumble of off-beat chirps with some throaty noises mixed in for fun. So I thought, it would be interesting to throw some of their songs over some backbeats and see what it sounded like.

It’s not Grammy winning, but it’s definitely certified fresh.

For reference, the original audio track is here, so you can hear what their songs normally sound like without editing/beats.