Humans aren't the only creatures that string sounds together to convey unique meanings. A study of the chestnut-crowned babbler bird from Australia revealed a method of communicating that has never before been observed in animals.  Key element of human language discovered in bird babble 
 
 Stringing together meaningless sounds to create meaningful signals was previously thought to be the preserve of humans alone, but a new study has revealed that babbler birds are also able to communicate in this way. Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Babbler bird flight call 
 
 Co-researcher Dr Simon Townsend, from the University of Zurich, said: "Although the two babbler bird calls are structurally very similar, they are produced in totally different behavioural contexts and listening birds are capable of picking up on this." Researchers at the Universities of Exeter and Zurich discovered that the chestnut-crowned babbler – a highly social bird found in the Australian Outback – has the ability to convey new meaning by rearranging the meaningless sounds in its calls. "It's a very basic form of word generation - I'd be amazed if other animals can't do this too." Lead author Sabrina Engesser from the University of Zurich said: “Although previous studies indicate that animals, particularly birds, are capable of stringing different sounds together as part of a complex song, these songs generally lack a specific meaning and changing the arrangement of sounds within a song does not seem to alter its overall message.” 
 
 “In contrast to most songbirds, chestnut-crowned babblers do not sing. In flight, they used an "A-B" call to make their whereabouts known, but when alerting chicks to food they combined the sounds differently to make "B-A-B". While the birds showed that they could tell the difference between the two arrangements by looking at the nests when they heard a feeding call and by looking out for incoming birds when they heard a flight call, they also could tell the difference when the researchers made flight calls from feeding elements and feeding calls from flight elements. “Instead, its extensive vocal repertoire is characterized by discrete calls made up of smaller acoustically distinct individual sounds.” 
 
 Engesser and her colleagues first noticed that the birds reused two sounds, A and B, in different arrangements while engaging in specific behaviors. According to co-author Professor Andy Russell, who has been studying babblers since 2004, they believe the birds may rearrange sounds to code new meaning because “doing so through combining two existing sounds is quicker than evolving a new sound altogether.” 
 
 Reserachers say their findings, which are published in the open source journal PLOS Biology, reveal “a potential early step in the emergence of the elaborate language systems we use today.”
– Scientists have discovered a talent never seen outside of humans in a small Australian bird: the ability to string sounds together to convey different meanings. Essentially, "it's a very basic form of word generation," researcher Andy Russell tells the BBC. The team started out by listening to chestnut-crowned babbler birds. Rather than sing, they produce "discrete calls made up of smaller, acoustically distinct individual sounds," an expert says in a press release. Two sounds, identified as "A" and "B," kept getting repeated. For example, the birds used an "AB" call to tell other birds where they were while in flight (listening birds would look to the sky), while a "BAB" call told chicks it was feeding time (listening birds would look at nests). Rearranging the sounds of the flight call to produce the latter call showed no alteration in the birds' behavior, and vice versa, proving the individual sounds were in fact the same. "Although the two babbler bird calls are structurally very similar, they are produced in totally different behavioral contexts and listening birds are capable of picking up on this," a researcher explains. Russell adds, per the Christian Science Monitor, the babblers may communicate this way because it's easier to swap existing sounds than make up new ones. What's perhaps most fascinating is that researchers believe the birds' "B" sound differentiates the meaning of the call. In other words, it's the "c" that discerns the words "cat" and "at" in the English language. Such distinguishing elements are called phonemes, and this basic example "might help us understand how the ability to generate new meaning initially evolved in humans," an expert says. "It could be that when phoneme structuring first got off the ground in our hominid ancestors, this is the form it initially took." Russell says the ability likely exists in other animals. (Learn why these "bachelor" birds could save their species.)