Victoria:
Our guest this week is Dr. Kelly Ronald. She is a professor of biology at Hope College in Michigan. She is a sensory ecologist, meaning she studies how animals process information from their environment and how animals communicate. She’s especially interested in birds and studies how birds perceive different signals from each other, like color and sound.
This week’s questions were submitted by the listeners through emails and on social media and by students at Bromwell Elementary in Denver, Colorado.
Dr. Ronald, thank you so much for talking to us today.
Dr. Ronald:
Thank you for having me. I’m excited to join you and to answer questions about birds. That’s my favorite thing to talk about.
Victoria:
Is there anything you want to add to that little introduction about what you do?
Dr. Ronald:
Oh, that was pretty great. I just ask lots of questions in my research lab about communication. So how do male and female birds talk to one another? How do they communicate through their feathers? And ask questions about why song is beautiful and why feather colors are beautiful to us.
Victoria:
(Andrew – What are all the different types of bird signals?)
Very cool. With that, we can get started with the questions. This first question is from Andrew, gets right at I think a good introductory question. What are all the different types of bird signals?
Dr. Ronald:
Oh, goodness. Yeah, the most well studied are birds song. And so you think a lot about songbirds that falls within Passeri types of birds. So those are a lot of birds that come to your bird feeders outside, or songbirds that we’re familiar with. So cardinals, blue jays, goldfinches. And so, we notice them because their song falls right within this window of where our ears are most sensitive to those frequencies. So they sound beautiful to us because of the physiology of the human ear. And so that’s song, that’s one modality. That’s been studied a lot.
We also know that birds are beautiful. So they have these striking plumage displays and next question will be, do birds see differently than us, but I won’t get to that yet. As scientists have noticed that these feathers are gorgeous: they’re pigmented with carotenoids, the same pigment that makes a carrot orange and hence the word carrot and carotenoids are often used in bird feathers. But there’s lots of other types of ways that birds can make color. And so we see signals on the visual side of things.
And then there’s some new evidence coming out there the birds can actually communicate via smell as well. So they have several glands that produce substances that other birds can smell, and they might use their bills to wipe those secretions onto twigs. And it might function in communication as well.
So yeah, lots of difference signaling modalities is what we call that acoustic, visual and olfaction.
Victoria:
(Susie – How do birds process information from their environment?)
Cool. That’s incredible.
All right. The next question is from Susie. How do birds process information from their environment?
Dr. Ronald:
Oh, goodness. So what I studied is at the sensory system level. So we are, the lab, the collective we, examine how the auditory nerve responds to sounds that we presented. We also look at the physical makeup or the anatomy of the retina. We also look at how the eye responds to light. So what I study is really at this sensory system level, but then all of this information goes to the brain, and within the brain, there’s so much going on. These sensory modalities are combining, there’s other information that isn’t even sensory that’s coming in there. And what happens in the brain is really where this sensory processing is happening. What the lab really focuses on is at the perception level and the sensory system level. So we have to have lots of different people researching at all of these different levels and communicating within the scientific communities to really understand how do animals process what’s in their environment.
It’s a big question. We need lots of help.
Victoria:
(Stacey – How do birds communicate with each other?)
(Fynn – Why do birds communicate with each other?)
We’ll do the next questions is a pair of questions cause they go together really well. This first one is from Stacey. How do birds communicate with each other? And the next question is from Fynn. Why do birds communicate with each other?
Dr. Ronald:
Yeah, so the modalities that I mentioned earlier are all ways that we see signals, but also they are not to communicate with us. Birds did not have all the signals to communicate with humans. And so all of the modalities that I mentioned are actually there to communicate with other birds. So they do communicate through song. They communicate through their visual signals. New evidence is coming out that they’re potentially communicating with olfactory signals as well. So that’s how they talk with conspecifics, so other members of the same species.
And then why? Oh, for lots of reasons. So, a lot of the time that birds spend in the wild are to survive, and so to communicate with one another about food sources, to communicate with one another about predators, that could limit survivorship.
But also males and females are trying to communicate with one another for raising offspring together. And so typically in birds, we see that males have evolve these elaborate songs, these elaborate plumage displays, whereas the females are more drab in appearance and perhaps don’t sing as often. And so we see that the males are courting females who then end up choosing which male might make the best parental investment in an offspring.
Victoria:
(Allen – Why are birds so many different colors?)
That is so interesting. All right. The next question kind of gets at something that you’ve discussed a little bit so far, but Allen wants to know why are birds so many different colors?
Dr. Ronald:
Oh, lots of reasons. Because I studied vision, you know, there’s this feedback between what the receiver can see and the colors that the animal can produce.
So I have to talk about the visual system in order to, to answer this question. Birds are so many different colors because birds can see so many different colors. And so those colors might be communicating something about the condition of the animal that is wearing them. And so birds can actually see more colors than we can. They have an additional cone photoreceptor that allows them to see more of the UV or the purple short wavelength colors than what we can. There are also some additional structures that allow them to see different colors.
And so it’s really this feedback loop. So when the male and female parents pair up and make offspring, they are passing down those traits to those offspring and that perpetuates this cycle of beauty in the plumage and beauty being seen by the receiver, and it propagates down.
Victoria:
That’s incredible. So when we look at like a peacock, we see so many different colors, and birds see even more than we do?
Dr. Ronald:
Absolutely yes. And it’s even on different planes of perception that we can’t even really wrap our heads around. So cause it’s not just about color, it’s about movement as well. And birds can perceive movement differently than we can as humans. And they can see, there’s still some ambiguity out there as to whether or not they can see polarized light, kind of like how your sunglasses can be polarized and change the angle at which light is reflected off of water. And if you put on these polarized sunglasses, it does something to the angle of those lights that enables us to see better. But that’s how species like insects, migrate, they detect these polarized lights and they can navigate using that. So there’s evidence that birds might be able to see even planes of light that we can’t even really begin to think about because they’re just so outside of our perceptual capabilities.
Victoria:
That is incredible. Oh my goodness.
Dr. Ronald:
That’s really, really cool.
Victoria:
(Leo- Why do birds chirp?)
Wow. Okay, so switching gears a little bit, we’ve got a bunch of questions about various bird sounds. So this first bird sound question comes from the Leo. Why do birds chirp?
Dr. Ronald:
So for lots of reasons. Chirps, as opposed to like song, the way that scientists kind of group those, you call song one thing, but then chirps might fall under like calls, which are kind of just like little contact calls. They would might say like, Hey, I’m here. A lot of times we see like baby birds chirping to their parents and that might indicate, Hey, I’m here, I’m hungry. And so again, communication, always, they’re trying to communicate something to whoever the listener is. and typically, when I think of chirps, I think of little nestlings begging for food.
Victoria:
(Ari – Why are birds really loud sometimes and quiet other times?)
Cute. All right, this next sound question comes from Ari. Why are birds really loud sometimes and quiet other times?
Dr. Ronald:
Ooh. Yeah. So there’s this phenomenon called the dawn chorus, right? So there’s this saying that is the early bird gets the worm, and that’s absolutely true. So birds do a lot of their vocalizing early in the morning when temperatures aren’t as hot. And so that helps for a lot of different reasons.
First of all, when it’s hot, you don’t necessarily want to be expending a whole bunch of energy singing. You want to be a little more quiet and saving that energy.
Also, this temperature can create what is called a sound shadow. So sounds travel differently based on how hot or how cold it is. So if you imagine yourself like over snow for instance, and you can like hear everything when it’s snowy outside. That’s because that snow and the temperature combined kind of muffles everything else. It’s so quiet and still. Hot temperatures do the opposite. It’s harder for sound to propagate.
And so it’s a lot of different reasons. So that’s why sometimes birds are really, really loud and obnoxious and sometimes they quiet down.
Can also think about predators being around too. So if a bird detects a predator they might start vocalizing whole bunch and say to their group mates, Hey, there’s someone over there, watch out, might eat you. Or they might take the strategy of quiet down and don’t vocalize because that predator might give you. So that’s another reason.
Victoria:
(Jenny – Why do those big black birds (crows? Ravens?) caw so loudly?)
Awesome. Okay. Jenny wants to know why do those big black birds (crows? Ravens?) caw so loudly?
Dr. Ronald:
Well, we can think about this in terms of just size overall. So we, as humans can make really loud noises because we’re really big, and same goes with birds. So you can get an idea of how big an animal is based on how loud the sound is that they can produce, and also how low frequency of that sound that they can produce. So yeah, those crows, they’re fairly big compared to other birds that I study.
And they are just really great communicators. They’re very social. You see them in groups. and so they’re often shouting at their group mates. Typically, when they have found food and they want to share it with others in their group.
Victoria:
(Mia – Do mockingbirds really mock?)
That makes sense. Okay. This next question is from Mia. Do mockingbirds really mock?
Dr. Ronald:
They really do. Isn’t that cool? That’s exactly why they have that name. They’re in a family called Mimidae. So Mimidae means mimic, right? So there are other birds within that family, like our catbirds too, which if you’ve ever gone out into a forest, they literally sound like a cat meowing. It’s like, meow, meow. That’s not often a cat, but a bird. And it’s the same sort of phenomenon, they’re both mimics.
So they can listen to things in their environment, and then their songs are what we call like jazz music where they’re combining elements across a whole bunch of different syllables that they have and compare them together in really unique ways. A lot of times, birds, you have a typical repertoire. So they say the same thing over and over and over again. But with these mimics, like mockingbirds and catbirds, it’s like they have this entire language where they’re just babbling and talking and being jazz musicians.
So yes, mockingbirds mock, for sure.
Victoria:
That is so incredible. Oh my goodness.
Dr. Ronald:
Should look up videos of the lyrebird too. They there’s some incredible videos on YouTube of this lyrebird that are mimicking things like chainsaws and it’s crazy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSB71jNq-yQ). Yeah.
Victoria:
Wow. We’ll put a link to that in the description of the podcast episode. So the listeners can hear it.
Dr. Ronald:
Awesome.
Victoria:
(Samantha – When parrots speak in English do they understand what they are saying or do they just repeat?)
All right. Another bird repeating question, I guess. Samantha wants to know when parrots speak in English, do they understand what they’re saying or do they just repeat?
Dr. Ronald:
Oh man. So, I study a very small niche of birds that are called songbirds, and parrots’ kind of outside of that. My best understanding of that question though, is that no, they do not understand what they are saying.
Although I’m sure you will hear stories of people that have pet parrots that are convinced otherwise, but it’s still a really interesting behavior, you know. We all learn language by repetition, right. So we start to learn language by practicing the syllables that we hear, and babies don’t necessarily know what ba or dad means, but they’re encouraged when we say, “Oh, we’re so excited, they say dada”. But when they’re that young, they don’t actually know that dada means dada. You know, it takes a little bit of higher order brain processing to actually make this connection between what I’m producing and what it actually means. And so I don’t think that higher order brain processing is there for parrots. But prove me wrong. You know, that’s what being a scientist is, is being able to have your hypothesis tested and be okay with being wrong. So you can go out there and study that and let me know what the real answer is.
Victoria:
(Sarah – How do birds sense danger? How do birds respond when they sense danger?)
Okay. This next question is from Sarah. How do birds sense danger? How do birds respond when they sense danger?
Dr. Ronald:
Yeah, so birds can detect danger by themselves using like personal information that they get from like if the predator makes a noise or they see the predator.
Or they can use what is called social information. So a lot of birds will forage in groups. We’ll see a whole big group of sparrows or a whole big group of crows all eating at the same spot. And so they’ll sense danger based on what their group mates are doing. And if the group mates, if one individual detect something and they fly away, the entire flock will fly away too. So that’s kind of visual information, you know, spotting your group mates outside, like with your eyes and seeing where they are as you’re foraging.
Some birds will form flocks, where they have alarm calls. So they can make alarm calls when they detect a predator and that auditory information can alert those species to a predator being nearby. So we see that a lot with like chickadees, and titmice, and Downy woodpeckers, all flocking together and using these alarm calls to communicate with not even within the same species, but across species. So there’s these hetero- specific flocks.
Victoria:
Cool. Yeah. I’ve definitely seen that where one bird flies away and then they all fly away, and I never knew why.
Dr. Ronald:
Yup. Yup.
Victoria:
(Taylor – Do birds communicate with other animals besides other birds?)
Okay, so more bird communication questions. Taylor wants to know, do birds communicate with other animals besides other birds?
Dr. Ronald:
That’s a great question. I’m trying to think of examples of that. The example that I just gave was of birds communicating with other species of birds. So you do see communication across different species groups. So that would be like, you know, if you think about the group of mammals, that would be like me communicating with another species of mammal, you know.
I’m trying to think of, you know, birds outside of other birds. I know that birds do eavesdrop on cues from insects. So robins, for instance, listening to earthworms making noise, and that is a hypothesis for how they find those earthworms. Same with woodpeckers too. But that’s not really communication, right? Because those earthworms and those insects don’t really want to be found. Communication is really this, like, I’m producing a signal and it’s designed for a particular receiver that I intend to hear it. And I’m looking for a behavioral response to that signal.
So it gets a little tricky when you think about true communication with another species, have to think more on that and see if I can come up with other examples beyond what I’m just coming up with on the spot. That’s a great question.
Victoria:
(Maya – What types of animals can communicate with different types of animals?)
Okay. And then another similar question, but outside of just birds. Maya wants to know what types of animals can communicate with different types of animals.
Dr. Ronald:
These are great questions. In order to communicate with other animals, the sensory systems of the animals have to be tuned to the signal that’s being produced.
So for instance, humans can’t perceive UV light. So we can’t see it. We know that it burns our skin, that it causes sun burns, but we can’t actually detect that UV light that’s causing that damage. So a signal that is in the UV wouldn’t make sense for communicating with humans.
So that kind of is a roundabout way of answering that question. I more so answered how would you design a signal in order to effectively communicate. And it really does require that the receiver is able to detect it.
What types of animals would be able to do that? Ones that are living in groups within environments where there’s a lot going on, where there’s a lot of different species, all interacting, and where it’s advantageous to communicate with species that are outside of your realm.
So there’s this great example of like bats and insects and frogs. Right? So the bats are trying to detect the insects. and then the frogs are also doing that. The bats are also trying to detect the frogs. And so there’s this big exchange of signals within this group where, you know, that’s kind of, we’re still talking about predator, prey relationships there.
So again, it gets on this, like, is it actual communication when prey are trying to avoid being detected by predators? But systems like that, where you have a lot of different species all within the same environment that are trying to maintain their own niche in the environment and survive.
Victoria:
That makes sense. What about like a sort of human manufactured environment? Like cows and sheep and herding dogs? Are they communicating or the dogs just kind of, you know, physically moving the herd animals?
Dr. Ronald:
That’s a great question. We could see how in that particular situation where communication between the dog and the cattle might be occurring, where it’s advantageous for the cattle to respond to the dog, and then they’re both rewarded, right? rewarded with food, rewarded with safety and shelter. So that very well could be happening.
It gets complicated. The definition of what actually is communication is still not even really decided even amongst the scientists like myself that study it. So there’s always examples of exceptions to the rule. You know, we can create these rules, but then, you know, there are loopholes when you really have to see like who benefits, you have to quantify benefit in order to determine communication. Yeah.
Victoria:
Sounds like a lot of good research questions to be asked.
Dr. Ronald:
Yes.
Victoria:
(Kiara – Do animals see color like we do?)
Okay. Let’s get back to color a little bit. This is a question from Kiara. Do animals see color like we do?
Dr. Ronald:
Oh, great. The answer is no. They can see color just as well as we can, so they can see reds and blues and yellows, but then they have this completely new color that we cannot perceive. So a lot of species can see down even deeper shades of purple that we can’t see, those are violet sensitive species. And then there are also species that can see into the ultraviolet light. And I can’t even describe what that color would look like to you because I can’t see it.
We talk a lot about how there are special cells in the eye that are called cones and those cones possible for how we see color. So as humans, we have three different cones. We have a red cone, and a blue cone, and a green cone. and so what I’m talking about is adding a completely additional cone that sees an even greater range of colors.
And then what’s even more special is that within these cones, birds have a fun little oil droplet. It’s like, if you imagine like oil on your kitchen counter, it’s like a little droplet of oil. And that is inside the cone and it filters the light even further. And so we think that this helps animals be able to discriminate between colors even better than we can. So they might be able to tell a light blue and a light blue as completely separate whereas we would say, Oh, those two light blues are exactly the same. They would be able to be like, no, no, this light blue is definitely more aqua and this one’s definitely more sky blue.
So they can see a wider range of colors, but then even within the colors that they can see, they can discriminate more finely. It’s very cool.
Victoria:
That is very cool. I should have asked an animal for help. I was painting my bathroom and I asked my parents what they thought about these four colors. And they were like, well, this one is basically the same as that one.
Dr. Ronald:
Yeah. Color is so funny. Right. it there’s the level of the retina, but then there’s also the level of the brain. So that’s where like you start to, you know, get into those questions of, is the dress blue or gold, or is it blue or black, or is it gold or yellow. But it’s yeah, it’s all, colors kind of made up, you know. We can see a particular range of it, but how we perceive red is completely different than how other animals see red. We’ve assigned like arbitrary names to these things.
Victoria:
Yeah. that is so cool. Fun things to think about.
Dr. Ronald:
Yeah.
Victoria:
(Zach – Why are some birds really bright colors and other birds are not really bright colors?)
This next question. I think you touched on this a little bit when we were talking about birds at the beginning, but Zach wants to know specifically why are some birds really bright colors and other birds are not really bright.
Dr. Ronald:
Yeah. So that question, Zach makes me think quite a bit about like the male, so the boy birds, being more brightly colored than the female birds. And there’s a lot of different reasons for that.
So typically, I mentioned that the females are the birds that end up exerting a lot of choice into who becomes their partner and their mate. And so you can imagine that all of these male birds are all saying, be my mate, be my mate, partner with me. And so the females are choosing which male is the most beautiful for me. And so, that means that the male are going to end up being more beautiful.
And the females, since there’s not this same sort of pressure, in terms of choice on female per winch, females might have more benefits, more advantages if they stay drab in color, it might aid in them not being as detected by predators, for instance, if they’re able to blend in more with their environment. And so it’s kind of this difference in the roles that males and females have.
And that phrase, when we talk about differences in how males look different from females in the population, that’s something that’s called sexual dimorphism. So di- means two, two morphs, two different morphologies or masks that the animals were, and it’s related to whether or not the animal is male or female.
Victoria:
(Layla – Do birds actually like bird houses?)
Awesome. This next question is from Layla. Do birds actually like bird houses?
Dr. Ronald:
It depends on the bird, sometimes. Do you like houses? So yeah, there are some birds that are what we call cavity nesters. And so that means that they really do like finding holes to nest in.
So we can think of birds, like house sparrows, you guys see house sparrows all the time, whenever you go to a fast food restaurant or you walk up to a store and you see those birds perched on the signs of the store that you’re entering. Those are how sparrows typically. And so they really liked nesting in cavities and holes. So you’ll see them often in your bird houses.
Some other common ones are European starlings. Those are blackbirds that are fairly big. Might see Eastern bluebirds, they also really like these cavities. So it depends, it depends on the species. If you set one up, someone will come.
Victoria:
(Leo – How can birds tell that they shouldn’t fly into windows on really tall buildings?)
All right, let’s see. This next question was from Leo. Leo wants to know how can birds tell that they shouldn’t fly into windows on really tall buildings?
Dr. Ronald:
Oh yeah, the problem is that they sometimes don’t know. And it’s actually a problem. There’s a whole group of scientists that are out there trying to understand how we can help birds avoid these tall buildings. We call them anthropogenic structures, anthro- meaning human, like anthropology. So a lot of times you do see that the birds come into contact with these structures. If they are able to avoid them, they do have very good vision, so they are able to avoid them visually, but sometimes not. That’s why you might see a lot of the cease birds around the perimeter of buildings. And whole research studies have looked at that, quantify the number of birds that have collided with these structures.
Things that we can do to deter them include perhaps designing lights or designing sounds that would deter the bird from the building, something that is more in line with the system or something that’s more than align with the signals that the animals actually able to pick up, or detect perceive. So that way they’re more likely to avoid the collisions with these tall buildings.
Victoria:
Yikes. That’s kind of sad.
Dr. Ronald:
I know, I know. Something that you could do in your house if you notice, I don’t know, if you notice a bird, trying to get in through a window. Sometimes I hear that putting a picture of like a cat up on the other side, might help the animal, like, Oh, this is a dangerous spot as the cat is a natural predator to birds. And so that might help deter those silly guys that keep hitting your window.
Victoria:
(Maya – Is bird communication changing with climate change?)
That makes sense. All right. Let’s get into some climate change questions. Maya wants to know is bird communication changing with climate change?
Dr. Ronald:
That’s a great question. I don’t know if we have the timescales yet to know whether or not climate change is impacting bird communication. There are studies, however, that talk about how changes in human activity has affected bird communication.
So there are studies looking at how birds sing in urban areas versus more rural and less populated areas. And it’s interesting. Traffic noise is particularly low frequency. And so in the urban areas, we see that the birds could potentially sing louder to try to overcome that traffic noise, but also increasing the frequency at which they sing in order to not be masked by the noise of the traffic. So if there’s a sound that’s like shh, I might talk up here to avoid that shh. So that way you can still hear my voice, and it’s not masked by that sound anymore.
There are, I am sure that there are studies looking at the effects of increased temperature on bird songs. I’m trying to think out of Dr. Elizabeth Derrybarry’s lab. I think that there’s been some work out of that lab, looking at what happens to singing and also female preference for songs depending on the temperature. So that could also be related a little bit to climate change within that context too. We need more work though. We need more work.
Victoria:
Yeah. So anyone that’s interested in that can grow up and be a scientist that studies it.
Dr. Ronald:
Yes, please.
Victoria:
(Sarah – Can animals sense that the climate is changing?)
Okay. Sarah wants to know can animals sense that the climate is changing?
Dr. Ronald:
Yeah, I suspect that they can definitely detect changes in weather that there are cues like light and temperature that can affect bird’s behavior. Now, whether or not that is linked to knowledge of climate change, I wouldn’t say that that is happening.
But definitely birds will behave differently depending on light availability, depending on the temperature, especially in terms of migration. So we see that the timing of migration has changed with climate change. We see range expansions, meaning that birds are now occupying different habitats that more closely mimic the temperatures that they’re used to. So they could either be going further latitude, closer to the poles, either closer to the North coast, closer to the South pole. Or if they’re a mountain dwelling species, they might move up in elevation. So moving closer to the top of the mountain to become more within that range of temperature that they are more used to. So yeah, we are seeing those effects for sure.
Victoria:
(Johann – Are birds related to dinosaurs? Have some birds evolved from dinosaurs, if yes, which are those birds?)
Yeah. Okay. Johann wants to know are birds related to dinosaurs? Have some birds evolved from dinosaurs, if yes, which are those birds?
Dr. Ronald:
Oh, goodness. You’re putting me on the spot, Johann. Yes, yes, the idea is that birds did evolve from dinosaurs. We are seeing more fossil evidence that suggests that some dinosaurs even had feather structures. So what we know as dinosaurs now very much could be right here still living with us.
The specific name. Oh, even though I have sons that are really into dinosaurs right now, I could not pronounce them adequately right now for you. So I don’t know the specific names. I apologize. But I know, I do know for a fact that birds did evolve from those classic dinosaurs that we know.
Victoria:
Yeah, I know a couple of names. I can kind of throw out there. So birds come from a lineage of dinosaurs that are raptors. So they’re the dinosaurs that walk on two legs that you know, kind of like velociraptor from Jurassic park, which is not. Actually, it all what velociraptor would’ve looked like in real life, think more like the size of a chicken and that’s velociraptor.
So the first fossil bird that is kind of the link between dinosaurs and birds themselves is called Archaeopteryx. And that’s pretty famous.
Dr. Ronald:
Yeah. Archaeopteryx. Yes. If I saw that in a multiple-choice list, I would definitely know that that’s the name for sure, but.
Victoria:
(Alex – Why did you choose to study birds?)
All right. Let’s get into some more questions about you, and how you became a scientist and everything. So Alex wants to know, why did you choose to study birds?
Dr. Ronald:
Oh, I think I fell in love with the question of understanding communication, and birds are great model system for asking those sorts of questions. Actually it wasn’t until fairly late during college that I made the decision. I knew I wanted to either go to be a medical doctor, or go to graduate school. And so it was really the summer research experience that was a part of through the national science foundation, NSF, that has this program called research experiences for undergraduates, REU program. And so it’s targeted to individuals that might not have been exposed to big research, one type of research questions. And so that was me. I went to a smaller school, and by joining this program during the summer I got experience working with a professor that studied birds. And so at that moment that was the first time I really even notice birds at all. So it was really, you know, it’s really community learning. You learn from other people what you’re interested in; you learn from your teachers what you’re interested in. And so, because I had a teacher that was interested in birds, I became interested too.
Victoria:
(Kaitlin – Did you know that you wanted to be a scientist when you were a kid?)
Kaitlin wants to know, did you know that you wanted to be a scientist when you were a kid?
Dr. Ronald:
I don’t think I really understood what scientists was as a kid. I knew that people that went to college and studied science could maybe be a human doctor, maybe be a veterinarian. I toyed with the idea of being a veterinarian for quite a while because I love animals. But at that point in time, I didn’t really have examples of what a scientist was or what a scientist does. So it really didn’t cross my mind until college.
But really, science is not just for people that have college educations or ended up getting doctorates in this field. Science is all about the process of observing the world around you, and asking a question, and trying to figure out the answer to that question. So you guys are all scientists, and just by going out and asking questions and asking these sorts of things, and you’re gathering information, your forming ideas on what the answer could be, you’re guessing, you’re asking experts in the field, and so you’re doing your own sort of data collection.
So in some ways I knew I wanted to work with animals, but in other ways I had no idea the type of job that I could do where I could study animals and be a scientist at the same time.
Dr. Ronald:
And hopefully with this podcast, kids will now have a better idea of what scientists are.
Victoria:
Yes. Love that.
Dr. Ronald:
(Samantha – Have you ever had a pet bird?)
Okay. Samantha wants to know, have you ever had a pet bird?
Victoria:
Does it count if the pet bird lived in my laboratory or does it have to live in my house? Cause that would change my answer a little bit.
I did in fact have a pet budgerigar, budgy, when we were growing up. So, but I was very young, so it was more my parents’ pet than my pet.
Now I take care of enough birds in my job that I actually don’t have pet birds at home, because I have enough here with me. So I don’t need to have more at home. I do have a pet dog though. His name’s Monte. He’s white.
Victoria:
Cute!
Dr. Ronald:
Yeah.
Victoria:
You get that question a lot?
Dr. Ronald:
Yes, I do. All the time. Yeah.
Victoria:
(Danny – Since you study animal communication, can you communicate with animals?)
Yeah. I bet. Okay. Danny wants to know, since you study animal communication, can you communicate with animals?
Dr. Ronald:
I can communicate with my dog fairly well. So yeah, there is an example of cross species communication, human and dog. You know, they, they communicate something to me. Like he wants food, and I haven’t given him any in a while, and then I provide the food once I understand why he is barking at me. So I think it’s fairly easy to communicate with our pets.
In the same way that Dr. Dolittle was showing on TV? No, unfortunately not. It would make my job a lot easier if I could just ask the birds. Can you see this color? Or can you not?
There are ways that we train the animal, like to answer that question. Like, we train them, Okay, if you can tell the difference between these two sounds, press this button and you’ll get rewarded with a piece of food. And then you play the sounds that are closer and closer together, and eventually they can’t tell them apart. And so they don’t press the food button. And so you can train the animals to do things like that in an experimental study, but takes a long time to train the animals. Right. You imagine trying to train a puppy to do a behavior that you want. And in our lab we study lots of birds, so it’s hard to train all of them.
Victoria:
(Zach – Would there ever be a person who could talk to animals like Dolittle?)
(Maya – Do you have any pets?)
(Alex – What’s your favorite animal?)
And that also answered Zach’s question. Would there ever be a person who could talk to animals like Dolittle? Oh, it looks like you also answered Maya’s question. Maya asked if you have any pets.
And the last question that means is Alex’s question. What’s your favorite animal?
Dr. Ronald:
Oh, that’s a good question. Oh, that’s hard too, it’s a good and hard question.
You know, I really do love dogs so much. There is just such a unique bond between humans and dog owners, and the history of it all, and how they came to be man’s best friend, is just so cool. So if I had to say like, is there any animal in the world that I couldn’t do without, I probably would have to say dogs. But in terms of, I usually get asked what’s your favorite bird?
And I think I have to say brown-headed cowbirds which you probably have never heard of, but they’re really cool. They’re the bird that I studied for a long time in graduate school. So studied them for six years. And they’re most well-known because the parents, the females and the males, they don’t make their own nests. So the females will lay their eggs in other bird’s nests. And hope that the other parents take care of it. And so it’s just, it’s a really cool, we call that a parasitic bird. So that means that other people don’t like it as much, because then it forces that mom to take care of another offspring that isn’t her own. But you know, I root for the underdog. I still show love to the brown-headed caliber because studying that bird got me to where I am today. So I’m very indebted to them.
Victoria:
Ah. Well, that is all of our questions. But do you have any comments or questions of your own for the listeners?
Dr. Ronald:
Oh, thank you for letting me come on here and for all of your questions today. I guess I would just say that if you have any additional questions that came up while I was answering yours is to please reach out to me. You can email me. I want to know the coolest thing that you learned today. So, you know, if there’s a way for you to let me know that, I would love to hear the most fun thing that you learned from listening to this.
Victoria:
I’ll post the link to your website in the description of the episode so they can visit the website and get your email.
Dr. Ronald:
Awesome. That would be great.
Victoria:
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. I learned a lot.
Dr. Ronald:
Great. I’m glad. Thank you for having me. It was wonderful.
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