Department of Cognitive and Behavioral Science, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, 153-8902, Japan; Biolinguistics Laboratory, Brain Science Institute (BSI), Riken, Wako, Saitama, 351-0198, Japan.
Sci Rep. 2011;1:120. doi: 10.1038/srep00120. Epub 2011 Oct 17.
In all ages and countries, music and dance have constituted a central part in human culture and communication. Recently, vocal-learning animals such as parrots and elephants have been found to share rhythmic ability with humans. Thus, we investigated the rhythmic synchronization of budgerigars, a vocal-mimicking parrot species, under controlled conditions and a systematically designed experimental paradigm as a first step in understanding the evolution of musical entrainment. We trained eight budgerigars to perform isochronous tapping tasks in which they pecked a key to the rhythm of audio-visual metronome-like stimuli. The budgerigars showed evidence of entrainment to external stimuli over a wide range of tempos. They seemed to be inherently inclined to tap at fast tempos, which have a similar time scale to the rhythm of budgerigars' natural vocalizations. We suggest that vocal learning might have contributed to their performance, which resembled that of humans.
在所有时代和国家，音乐和舞蹈都是人类文化和交流的核心部分。最近，人们发现鹦鹉和大象等会发声的动物与人类一样具有节奏感。因此，我们以一种模仿叫声的鹦鹉物种虎皮鹦鹉为研究对象，在控制条件下和一个系统设计的实验范式中，调查它们的节奏同步性，以此作为理解音乐节奏协同进化的第一步。我们训练了八只虎皮鹦鹉进行等时敲击任务，即它们根据视听节拍器样刺激的节奏啄击一个键。虎皮鹦鹉在很宽的节奏范围内表现出对外部刺激的顺应。它们似乎天生倾向于以快节奏敲击，这种节奏与虎皮鹦鹉自然叫声的节奏具有相似的时间尺度。我们认为，发声学习可能有助于它们的表现，这类似于人类的表现。
