I step out of my door here on campus and do a playback to the fairy-wrens, they understand what’s going on and flee. And if I walk five minutes up the road to the botanic gardens and do the playback, the fairy-wrens don’t respond. To me, this is very startling. It means the fairy-wrens do not respond to unfamiliar alarm calls until they learn that they mean danger—in effect, until they learn the new language.” Learning, rather than familiar acoustic structure, determines a bird’s response.
