This highlights the fact that even for common species, we are continually expanding our basic understanding of a species’ “umwelt” and growing in our appreciation of how species differ in their perceptual abilities. 2) and fish can have 5–10 ( reviewed in 3). Whereas humans only have 3 cone-opsin proteins (the main determinant for cone cell sensitivity) in the eye which underlie color vision, many avian species have 4 (e.g. As we are reminded from the relatively recent research on vision, the perceptual abilities of non-human animals often are drastically different than our own. All animals filter the complex stimuli they encounter in the natural world through their species-specific sensory and perceptual capabilities. Von Uexkull famously postulated the concept of the “umwelt” which refers to aspects of the environment and surroundings that an animal attends to in order to survive and reproduce 1. One of the great challenges facing ethology since its inception has been to understand the sensory and perceptual world an organism lives in. This study provides a foundation for our understanding of how acoustic fine structure may be involved in animal communication.
Combined, our results are consistent with the hypothesis that zebra finches can encode biologically relevant information within the fine structure of their calls. Results from signal analysis methods also suggest that acoustic fine structure may carry information that distinguishes between biologically relevant categories including sex, call type and individual identity. Results from psychoacoustic experiments demonstrate that zebra finches are able to discriminate extremely small differences in fine structure, which are on the order of the variation in acoustic fine structure that is present in their vocal signals. Here we describe natural variability in acoustic fine structure of male and female zebra finch calls. However, the precise limit of this discrimination ability and how it is used in the context of natural communication remains unclear. The ability to discriminate changes in the fine structure of complex sounds is well developed in birds.