This is Scientific American — 60-Second Science. I'm Christopher Intagliata.
Songbirds produce a rich repertoire of sounds: songs, of course, but also chatter calls, flight calls and alarm calls: like this high-pitched warning from a black-capped chickadee: <
"
A cool coincidence, for sure. But here's where it gets interesting. Lindsay then played the caterpillar whistle through a speaker near a bird feeder. And the birds—of many different species—dove for cover. "Sometimes we'd see nuthatches flicking their wings, which is a big sign of distress for them. Sometimes it would take a really long time to return to feeding, which is a big indicator that they were taking that whistling noise pretty seriously."
And whereas the birds were unperturbed by the song of a house finch—a control sound—they responded to the caterpillar whistles with almost the same urgency as when they heard that real alarm call <
Lindsay presented the results at the International Symposium on Acoustic Communication by Animals in Omaha.
Previous work suggests the caterpillars whistle when pecked at by birds. And they sometimes squeal, too: <
Thanks for listening for Scientific American — 60-Second Science Science. I'm Christopher Intagliata.