De novo establishment of wild-type song culture in the zebra finch

Cultural genetic baggage We tend to think of culture — in humans and in other animals — as something that is passed on through social learning. But the species-typical nature of some aspects of cultural diversity, and variations between individuals of a particular species, point to possible genetic origins. Fehér et al. explored this latter point by analysing the establishment of socially learned birdsong in an island colony of naive zebra finches. Although the original founding members of the colony were never exposed to tutored birdsong during development, and exhibited a song that differed markedly from wild-type, in as few as three or four generations, the tutored song approached that of the wild-type. These findings suggest that species-specific song culture can develop de novo, and echo the well known instance of de novo evolution of Nicaraguan sign language, spontaneously developed by deaf children in Managua, showing grammatical similarities to spoken human languages.