<story><title>Experimental evidence for compositional syntax in bird calls (2016)</title><url>https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4786783/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jungletime</author><text>I did a hike on a mountain ridge in Hawaii (Stairway to Heaven),  and was very shocked by how loud the highway below was. I was maybe 3000 feet above. The sound was amplified from from the valley below, the mountain sides almost acting like walls of a speaker.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s something that I don&amp;#x27;t think gets enough attention, the way light pollution does. But its&amp;#x27; definitely a problem in some places. And I can see how it would disrupt bird calls.</text></comment>
<story><title>Experimental evidence for compositional syntax in bird calls (2016)</title><url>https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4786783/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>hirundo</author><text>Humans have tonal components to meaning, e.g. in English, &amp;quot;You are hungry.&amp;quot; doesn&amp;#x27;t have the lift at the end as does &amp;quot;You are hungry?&amp;quot;. I wonder if any birds do something similar to distinguish, e.g. &amp;quot;Predator!&amp;quot; vs &amp;quot;Predator?&amp;quot;. Maybe someday an app on our phones will be able to translate as we walk through the woods, like &amp;quot;A female Carolina chickadee in the sycamore at 10 o&amp;#x27;clock says there&amp;#x27;s a raven coming from the south&amp;quot;.</text></comment>