On the occasion of the announcement of sir David Attenborough’s retirement, the Flemish talk show De Laatste Show aired the famous clip of the documentary The Life of Birds featuring the Australian Superb Lyrebird (Menura novaehollandiae).
Image© Ian Michael Thomas 2007 on Flickr
The clip (see Video Google) illustrates the bird’s amazing talent to mimic songs of other birds in an effort to attract females to his display site. With its built-in MP3 recorder and player, the feathery sound box also reproduces the sounds of camera shutters, car alarms… and chain saws.
While this is really hilarious at first, one of the guests (cartoonist Kamagurka) raised an interesting point: “If a bird living in the rainforest starts mimicking chain saw sounds, isn’t it time to start asking ourselves some questions? This bird is singing its own song of desctruction.”
In my opinion, the guest is right: a species being listed in the 2007 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (LR/LC) should not be imitating the sound of habitat destruction.
In fairness, the IUCN aren’t that concerned about it. I think it’s only there to stop anyone else doing the assessment.
Of course, the chainsaw impression could be what’s saving it. Imagine you’re an illegal logger and you heard another chainsaw near by. Would you hang around waiting for an argument, or toddle off somewhere safer. This is evidently why deforestation is a problem in places like South America – their birds aren’t good enough mimics.
Are the female Lyrebirds birds to make the difference between the ‘real’ sound and the sound mimiced by their potential future lover? Would they go towards every forest sound they hear to check it out? (The other bird(s) seem(s) to get mistaken…)
(hm…, guess ‘birds’ should have been ‘able’)
Can the birds do impressions of Sir David Attenborough?
@Henry: now that would be incredibly funny!
I saw this a while ago and thought “no way is that real!” So, it’s really real? Really?!?
Really. The only bird I know that can sing two distinct songs at the same time.