Birds all over the world use the same sound to warn of threats
Recent scientific studies have confirmed that many birds across the world use a remarkably similar sound to warn of specific threats—especially brood parasites like cuckoos, which lay their eggs in other birds’ nests.
Details of the Universal Bird Warning Call
Researchers have found that more than 20 bird species from different continents, some separated by over 50 million years of evolution, all produce an almost identical “whining” alarm call when they detect brood parasites near their nests. This vocalization is not simply a product of shared ancestry or geography—the birds studied include species from Australia, Africa, Asia, and Europe.
Instinct and Learning Combined
This unique alarm call blends instinctive and learned behavior. Birds instinctively react to the sound of the call, immediately responding to the threat, but young birds learn to produce the call themselves only after witnessing and associating it with encounters with brood parasites. Scientists refer to this as social transmission.
Cross-Species Communication
Playback experiments and global database analyses revealed that even unrelated bird species, when played a recording of the “whining” call from across the world, would recognize and react to it as a warning. This suggests the call acts almost like a universal “word” or alarm that enables cooperation and defence against a shared enemy among multiple species.
Significance for Animal and Human Communication
This birds’ call is the first documented case of a learned alarm signal shared universally across many species, representing a unique midpoint between pure instinct and fully learned language. Researchers believe this discovery may offer significant insights into how complex communication systems, including human language, could have evolved.
Birds worldwide do use virtually the same sound to warn others of the specific threat posed by brood parasites, making it one of the clearest examples of a universal animal “language” yet discovered.
