Uh while this happens in the vocal learning birds . So there were all these behavioral parallels that came along with a package . And then people looked into the brain .
And so that was a similarity . In other words , they had this kind of behavior that's more similar to us than chimpanzees have with us or than chickens have with them , right ? They're closer relatives and then they discovered even more similarities , these critical periods that if you remove a child and you know , this unfortunately happens where a child is feral and that is not raised with human and goes through their puberty phase of growth becomes hard for them to learn a language as an adult .
if you put those same mutations or similar type of deficits in these vocal learning birds , you get similar deficits . So convergence of the behavior is associated with similar genetic disorders of the behavior . Incredible , I have to ask , do hummingbirds sing or do they hum ?
And then uh jumping many years later , you know , I started to dig down into these uh brain circuits to discover that these brain circuits had parallel functions with the brain circuits for humans , even though they're by a different name like brocas and laryngo motor cortex . And most recently , we discovered not only the actual circuitry and the connectivity are similar , but the underlying genes that are expressed in these brain regions in a specialized way , different from the rest of the brain are also similar between humans and songbirds and parrots . So all the way down to the genes .
Orders that they can imitate sounds like we do . And so that was a similarity . In other words , they had this kind of behavior that's more similar to us than chimpanzees have with us or than chickens have with them , right ?
