William Feeney receives funding from Australian Geographic and the Australian National University. Species must reproduce to survive, and animals have found unique ways of achieving this. For some, ...

A pigment that makes feathers and hair orange helps prevent cellular damage by removing excess cysteine from cells.

If songbirds could appear on "The Masked Singer" reality TV competition, zebra finches would likely steal the show. That's because they can rapidly memorize the signature sounds of at least 50 ...

Zebra finches program their offspring to prepare for global warming by singing to eggs before they hatch. In especially hot areas, finch parents make a special call to incubating eggs, basically ...

In an article published earlier this week in Nature, researchers revealed the complete genome of the zebra finch and focused on the intricacies of their vocal communication. The zebra finch, the males ...

As with many bird species, only male zebra finches are able to learn the species-typical song from a tutor, usually the father. Over a period of three months, the young males initially only listen to ...

Bird’s nests come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, and they’re built out of all sorts of things. Hummingbirds, for instance, create tiny cups just a couple centimeters wide; sociable weavers in ...

Every time a zebra finch lands, takes off, or hops on the guitars' strings, the notes play through a nearby amplifier. Courtesy of Ben Mirin The young male zebra finch alighted on the nearest guitar ...

Male zebra finches learn their song by imitating conspecifics. To stand out in the crowd, each male develops its own unique song. Because of this individual-specific song, it was long assumed that ...