That a parrot can copycat sounds is nothing new. But vocal learning is not common in animals. Researcher Carel ten Cate of the Institute of Biology Leiden (IBL) of Leiden University has now discovered ...

Bats can learn to mimic specific sounds, which puts them into an elite group of animals capable of this. Studying how bats can copy noises could help us learn more about humans’ unique capacity for ...

We all know that birds imitate sounds. If you weren’t aware of the many species that can do this, you’ll probably at least know that parrots are famous for mimicking humans. Along with parrots, ...

Some songbirds learn to sing by listening to other birds. Some other animals can learn to copy sounds. But what does that tell us about human speech? Sonja Vernes from the Max Planck Institute for ...

Musk ducks in Australia are able to imitate sounds like a door slamming or a human cursing. Research on the animal’s ability to mimic sounds began in 1980. Songbirds, parrots and hummingbirds can also ...

Elephants learn to imitate sounds that are not typical of their species, the first known example after humans of vocal learning in a non-primate terrestrial mammal. The discovery, reported in today's ...