Grandparent scam: London, Ont., senior beats fraudsters not once, but twice
It was a typical Tuesday for Mabel Beharrell, 84, until she got the call that would turn her world upside down. Her teenaged grandson was in trouble and needed her help.
Humans have long made playlists to express their love towards a potential partner, and new research suggests some birds not only do the same, but can rotate the order.
Male song sparrows, found throughout North America, use their tweets to attract mates. Previous research suggests the sparrows can have up to 12 two-second songs in their repertoire, which they repeat a few times before moving on to the next song.
This "cycle" of songs acts like a playlist and can last for up to 30 minutes. Once it is over, the sparrows will change the order of the songs in the playlist each time it is sung.
What was not previously known is whether or not this re-ordering of the playlist was "by accident or design," according to a Duke University post on the research by Stephen Nowicki, a biologist at the university, which was published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B this week.
In order to collect the data needed to answer this question, Nowicki's research partner William Searcy, an ornithologist and biologist at the University of Miami, hiked into the backwoods of northwest Pennsylvania with equipment to record hours of the birds' songs.
The research team took these songs and plotted them visually, looking to identify each song, how often it was sung, and in what order.
This analysis indicated that male song sparrows keep track of their tweets intentionally, as the males generally sing through their entire repertoire before repeating any of their songs. It also indicated that the longer the sparrows sing a particular two-second song, the longer they would wait before singing it again.
Both of these findings suggest that sparrows actually design their playlists, rather than randomly cycle through their songs. It also suggests that song sparrows have “long-distance dependencies,” or a rare talent for memory. If what a sparrow sings depends on what he sang 30 minutes ago, then that is a 360-times larger memory capacity than the next longest memory capacity found in birds. The canary can only remember up to the last five to 10 seconds of its playlist.
The results also suggest that the song sparrow could have a strong "generative grammar" to its tweets. Generative grammar, or "universal grammar," is a theory usually attributed to American linguist Noam Chomsky. The theory states that human language is shaped by certain structures and rules innate in the brain.
The possible presence of long-distance dependencies and generative grammar could mean that the communication between song sparrows is closer to human syntax than originally thought. This combination, according to Nowicki's study, has "not previously been described in any animal signalling system."
What is less clear is whether or not this increases the male song sparrow's odds at finding a mate over other songbirds.
It was a typical Tuesday for Mabel Beharrell, 84, until she got the call that would turn her world upside down. Her teenaged grandson was in trouble and needed her help.
The deaths of four people on a farm near the Saskatchewan village of Neudorf have been confirmed a murder-suicide.
Genetic analysis has shed light on a long-standing mystery surrounding the fates of U.S. President George Washington's younger brother Samuel and his kin.
A bus carrying worshippers headed to an Easter festival plunged off a bridge on a mountain pass and burst into flames in South Africa on Thursday, killing at least 45 people, authorities said.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump is officially selling a copy of the Bible themed to Lee Greenwood’s famous song, 'God Bless the USA.' But the concept of a Bible covered in the American flag has raised concern among religious circles.
Ontario released its annual sunshine list Thursday afternoon, noting that the largest year-over-year increases were in hospitals, municipalities, and post-secondary sectors.
Calgary police have shut down a number of bridges into and out of the downtown core as officers deal with a distraught individual.
Premier Wab Kinew and federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre met at the Manitoba legislature Thursday afternoon.
Rainfall warnings of up to 90 millimetres and other alerts have been issued for six Canadian provinces, according to the latest forecasts.
B.C. conservation officers recently seized a nine-foot-long Burmese python from a home in Chilliwack.
A New Brunswicker will go to bed Thursday night much richer than he was Wednesday after collecting on a winning lottery ticket he let sit on his bedroom dresser for nearly a year.
The Ontario government is introducing changes to auto-insurance, but some experts say the move is ill-advised.
A Toronto restaurant introduced a surprising new rule that reduced the cost of a meal and raised the salaries of staff.
Newfoundland’s unique version of the Pine Marten has grown out of its threatened designation.
A Toronto man is out $12,000 after falling victim to a deepfake cryptocurrency scam that appeared to involve Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
It started small with a little pop tab collection to simply raise some money for charity and help someone — but it didn’t take long for word to get out that 10-year-old Jace Weber from Mildmay, Ont. was quickly building up a large supply of aluminum pop tabs.
There’s a group of people in Saskatoon that proudly call themselves dumpster divers, and they’re turning the city’s trash into treasure.
Ontario is facing a larger than anticipated deficit but the Doug Ford government still plans to balance its books before the next provincial election.