Arthur Greene
They say that over time partners in a marriage grow more and more alike. Well it turns out penguins aren’t too different.
Scientists have discovered that African penguins will change their vocal calls to match their partner’s calls over time. They are one of only a few species in the world which do this.
African penguins reside along the country’s western coast. Throughout the year they can be spotted basking on the beach with their partner, who they remain with for their entire lives.
Luigi Baciadonna at the University of Turin, Italy, spent three years observing the vocal calls of African penguins, which they use when they’re lonely or trying to keep track of their friends.
He found that over time, the calls grew more similar to their partner’s, as well as the calls of penguins they spent a lot of time with.
It turns out that the reason for this is not just because penguins behave like an old married couple, but because it makes it easier to find one another in a crowd.
“Imagine that you are in a pub, you are with your friends and the noise of your environment is really super noisy,” Baciadonna told New Scientist.
“What you do is try to start to talk in a certain way so that your communication is more effective.”
This could go beyond helping us to understand the vocal behaviour of penguins and could actually hold the key to learning about the voices of humans and other creatures.
“This result is very interesting, because you find these middle pieces to the puzzle of how vocal learning could be evolved and which selection pressures could be involved,” Sara Torres Ortiz at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Germany told the publication.
