• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Birds May Dream, But What Do Those Dreams Sound Like?

April 12, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

Have you ever had a conversation in your dreams? Maybe it’s just everyday chatter, maybe it’s an argument with someone, but it’d be pretty cool if we were somehow able to record it. As it happens, birds also seem to get vocal in their dreams, and a new study has been able to translate what that might sound like.

Scientists have known for a while that birds seem to dream about singing – the pattern of neurons that fire while they’re awake and singing can also be seen during sleep, as though they are practicing. Translating that pattern into what the song was, however, proved to be difficult.

Advertisement

Then, in 2018, professor of physics Gabriel Mindlin and colleagues discovered that birds also flex their vocal muscles in their sleep, in the same way they would were they belting out a tune during the day. 

We can’t hear that song though, “since the respiratory rhythm is not altered during sleep, the high-energy airflow needed to start auto-sustained oscillations in the labia [not that one, it’s part of a bird’s vocal organ] and generate sound is not produced,” the authors explain in the new study.

When the researchers identified the vocal muscle movement, they did so using a technique called electromyography. The team has now used data from this approach, with the aid of a dynamical systems model, to translate the songs in the dreams of great kiskadees.

“During the past 20 years, I’ve worked on the physics of birdsong and how to translate muscular information into song,” said Mindlin in a statement. “In this way, we can use the muscle activity patterns as time-dependent parameters of a model of birdsong production and synthesize the corresponding song.”

Advertisement

When getting into a squabble over territory, great kiskadees perform a distinct vocalization known as a “trill”, consisting of a sequence of short syllables (yep, birds have syllables too) sent out at around 10 to 20 Hz. The synthetic songs produced revealed that the kiskadees in the study appear to have been dreaming about confrontation.



“Analyzing muscular activity patterns during sleep reveals consistent activity patterns corresponding to these vocalizations: sequences of brief activation patterns occurring at a rate between 15 and 20 Hz,” the authors write.

Some might find it reassuring to know we’re not the only species that can get a bit het up in dreams, something that Mindlin seemed to resonate with. “I felt great empathy imagining that solitary bird recreating a territorial dispute in its dream,” said the researcher. “We have more in common with other species than we usually recognize.”

Advertisement

The study is published in the journal Chaos.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Factbox-Top announcements from Apple event
  2. WTO chief says trade must do more to address ‘devastating’ vaccine inequity
  3. Internet Figures Out Which Muppets Are Predators And Which Are Prey Based On Their Eyes
  4. AI Discovers New Material That Could Slash Lithium Use In Batteries

Source Link: Birds May Dream, But What Do Those Dreams Sound Like?

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • “The Body Is Slowly And Continuously Heated”: 14,000-Year-Old Smoked Mummies Are World’s Oldest
  • Pizza Slices, Polaroid Pictures, And Over 300 Hats: What’s Left Behind In Yellowstone’s Hydrothermal Areas?
  • The Mathematical Paradox That Lets You Create Something From Nothing
  • Ancient Asteroid Ripped Apart In Collision Had Flowing Water
  • Flying Foxes Include The World’s Biggest Bat And The Largest Mammal Capable Of True Flight
  • NASA Responds To Claims That Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS Is An Advanced Alien Spacecraft
  • Millions Of Tons Of Gold Are In Earth’s Oceans, Potentially Worth Over $2 Quadrillion
  • The Race Back To The Moon: US Vs China, Will What Happens Next Change The Future?
  • NOAA Issues G3 Geomagnetic Storm Warning As 500,000 Kilometer Hole Sends Solar Wind At Earth
  • Lasting 776 Days, This Is The Longest Case Of COVID-19 Ever Recorded
  • Living Cement: The Microbes In Your Walls Could Power The Future
  • What Can Your Earwax Reveal About Your Health?
  • Ever Seen A Giraffe Use An Inhaler? Now You Can, And It’s Incredibly Wholesome
  • Martian Mudstone Has Features That Might Be Biosignatures, New Brain Implant Can Decode Your Internal Monologue, And Much More This Week
  • Crocodiles Weren’t All Blood-Thirsty Killers, Some Evolved To Be Plant-Eating Vegetarians
  • Stratospheric Warming Event May Be Unfolding In The Southern Polar Vortex, Shaking Up Global Weather Systems
  • 15 Years Ago, Bees In Brooklyn Appeared Red After Snacking Where They Shouldn’t
  • Carnian Pluvial Event: It Rained For 2 Million Years — And It Changed Planet Earth Forever
  • There’s Volcanic Unrest At The Campi Flegrei Caldera – Here’s What We Know
  • The “Rumpelstiltskin Effect”: When Just Getting A Diagnosis Is Enough To Start The Healing
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version