So , um which would be kind of the equivalent in the linguistic community of universal grammar . There is something genetically influencing our vocal communication on top of what we learn culturally . And so there's this balance between the genetic control of speech or a song in these birds and the learned uh cultural control .
And what's amazing about hummingbirds ? And I , we're gonna say vocal learning species in general is that for whatever reason , they seem to evolve multiple complex traits , you know , this idea that the evolving language , spoken language in particular comes along with a set of specializations . Incredible when I was coming up in neuroscience , I learned that I think it was the work of Peter Marler that um young birds learn songbirds , learn their tutor song and learn it quite , quite well .
And not only that , we are discovering that mutations in these genes that cause speech deficits in humans , like in Fox P two . 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 .
We call it a can inch , right ? Uh And vice versa for the canary because there's something different about their vocal musculature or the gene or the circuitry in the brain . And with a zebra finch , even with a closely related species , if you would take a zebra finch uh young animal and in one cage next to it , place its own species , adult male , right ?
There is something genetically influencing our vocal communication on top of what we learn culturally . And so there's this balance between the genetic control of speech or a song in these birds and the learned uh cultural control . And so , so yes , if you were to take , um you know , um I mean , in this case , we , we actually tried this at Rockefeller later on take a zebra finch and raise it with a canary .
