Random babbling leads chicks to the perfect tune

[natam6]

0:43

[SuperHanne84]

I appreciates this knowledge but I DONT think it was worth torturing birds for. Useless suffering.

[RoseTsukiyomi]

Honestly, they couldnt figure this out with common sense?

[BooshTopGoth]

What the hell. they have to learn all over again. harsh much. poor birds... :(

[blaque7]

wow wtf was the point of that. Why would they give a bird brain surgery to find out where the part of the brain controls their communication. Scientist are assholes

[arkharaora]

cruel sick and heartless brainless sadistic "scientists"

[adrastea99]

LoL.

I think you should leave out 'brainless'

[iberollin]

Wow, the bird got retarded after you CUT PART OF ITS BRAIN OUT? Wow, amazing! I never could have guessed that!

[slayniac]

It is far more interesting that surgery is not even required to achieve the same result on certain humans.

[ytrewQwerty]

*yawn*

[darkstar2k2003]

I totally agree that this is pointless.

[HelenaPenkul]

This shouldn't have been done..

[BrilIiance]

I agree bro.

[winterstellar]

Haha, birds arent "mini-humans". The research/science that is being done on consciousness clearly shows that a brain of any primitive animal is almost light-years away from having a conscious experience of anything. Their brains aren't wired up for that and they lack the type of brain-cell that makes consciousness or a conscious experience of anything. Their brains are "disconnected" in that respect.So perform what ever you like of excperiments on them. (I wouldn't..I think They're cute..haha..)

[trickyssx]

Good point. No animal is sentient, that's kinda what makes us human.

[silentstain]

what a stupid thing to do to those poor birds!!! Especially to make an even stupider point.

[JacobusHolland]

My point is, to Blue Delusion, that scientists are certainly not immune to the law and any experiment involving animals has to undergo strict evaluation to gain permission to do it (at least here in the UK). And your point about animal behaviour experiments being useless is unfounded -even if you don't have any interest in other animals, this will most certainly have usable anthropic ramifications.

[merrett]

Some of these videos annoy me. Mainly because the results are so disappointing, and also because the titles are misleading.

Maybe it's a result of growing up in a post-modern age. I'm not satisfied unless it's ground-breaking and world-changing.

[IM2DUMB2LIVE]

so are they supposed to test bird vocal ranges on humans??

[NivnacMas]

BlueDelusion.

You would rather test on humans then animals?

Idiot..

[deogunz]

the narrator has a lisp

[lippspa1]

cool that was nice

[VideyoJunkei]

they operated on birds for THIS?!?! sad, and overall worthless info!!

[ccaptorchen]

mapping out brain function is worthless info? um... Neuroscientists certainly seems to like this info. but who cares right? when was the last time anyone needed brain surgery?

[BlueDelusion]

What good did they get out of this experiment? I could understand the need for an operation if it was to find out something worthwhile - but doing an op just to find out what makes birds sing nice songs makes no sense to me. I think scientists have way too much time on their hands if they're doing this kind of pointless research.

[bugsoo101]

yeah... good to know but did they really have to perform an operation on it? I know it was for scientific purposes but it's wrong.

[VailBloodyClaws]

Poor bird.

[Rachey827]

Interesting...

[indiansummer7]

ah!...so birds babble too then! :D thats good to know!! :D

[Richona]

OR

the singing just matures as the adults vocal chords do... leading them to sing better...?

stop cutting up birds brains you FREAKS

[o7jimmy]

Cousins. :)

[anner442]

Before studies, invasive studies...interesting...can't you just listen to them to figure that out? This is retarded research and should be against the law. Let's listen to you and see how you feel with a brain probe. I'll bet you would love it! Research with logic and common sense...let's do it! Wow, what a f'n idea!

[BlueDelusion]

If I've learnt anything from this vid it's that scientists are immune from the law. Fair enough, governments grant them permission to carry out experiments but maybe they should be a bit more selective in what experiments they are allowed to carry out. In my opinion this experiment was pointless cruelty and should be dealt with as such. I think you are right anner442 they wouldnt like to be treated like that. If they wouldnt do it to a human then why do it to a bird - its defenceless.

[JacobusHolland]

Do you have any idea the kind of restrictions that are imposed on any experiments involving animals? They are very strict and in some ways I feel too strict. For exmaple, it is illegal to dissect vertebrates (even who died in a natural way) without a permit. But it's perfectly legal to eat them! I.e. one can catch a fish and proceed to (de-)gut and eat it, provided they fail to observe anything about the fish's anatomy or speculate about it's physiology!

[out7of7the7blue]

its great to know things but if u have to preform unneccasary surgery or harm an animal in any way dont u think its better to just not try the expirament? i mean its not the end of the world if ppl didnt prove this. its not going to help anyone in any way besides just learning something new all it is is killing and harming animals for expiraments. this is why ppl go on strikes.

[vilnaukraina]

wow, what is the fuckin point of that?

[dafttool]

Vivisection experiments on birds just to learn this?!! I'm not impressed. This is one of the reasons I didn't finish pursuing a career in this field, even though I was well on my way in that direction. In college, I used to live nearby the vet lab where they did vivisection experiments on dogs & cats. Everynight I went to sleep hearing them howl and call out to one another, me full well knowing all would end up dead once the "doctors" were done screwing around with them. :(

[dafttool]

And before one you jumps on my case saying "how else is a vet supposed to learn how to save your pet?" I would counter that human doctors don't have to practice vivisection on humans to learn their trade, why should veterinarians? It's all so pointless, since even vets go through a residency period just as human doctors. There's no need to injure an animal just so you can fix it, only to put it down.

[ccaptorchen]

that counter makes no sense, we know drugs will work on humans because we did animal testing most of the time. so to not harm animals to find out cures for your pet. I guess we need human testing?

[dafttool]

Perhaps you don't realize what sort of experiments I'm talking about. I'm not talking drug tests. I'm talking breaking legs & then setting them. I'm talking smashing skulls in & then trying to fix the damage. I'm talking hitting an animal so hard organs are ruptured, & then going inside to see what you can do, getting the animal well again, just so it can be injured again. Eventually, they just let the animal die while still on the table, never letting it wake up again.

[dafttool]

Human doctors learn in their residency period taking care of what patients come through the door, supervised all along. Vets learn this way also, but in addition, some vet schools also conduct vivisection on healthy animals to hone their medical skills. Human doctors don't do this, yet vets sometimes do. It's an unneccessary & cruel practice.

[ccaptorchen]

in that case, I think thats uncall for. how many vets actually do that though? most vets i know love pets they can't even hurt a fly!

[dafttool]

The number of schools that do it is decreasing, but it is still prevalent. Most vets do love animals. It's why they got in the job. And I worked with vets many years and they are quite divided on the efficacy of such programs.

I, myself, got far enough in the program that I have regrettably done vivisection on turtles just to find out what they already know about hearts, vagus nerves, adrenalin, etc. It was a weeding out process on the way to worse things. It worked. It weeded me out.

[BlueDelusion]

At least a human could consent to being tested on. Animals can't tell you they don't want to be tested on or say "that hurts, could you stop now?".

[jeffsadowski]

Interesting but it kind of disturbs me a little that they did surgery on the bird.

[catchyphrase92]

And once again scientists prove that we CAN spend humongous amounts of money and time in yet MORE useless experiments.

"Let's make an experiment. Say, we inject a mouse with HCl and another one with a small amount of water and see who survives, because until we don't try this, we can't know for sure, right? Oh, and we'll also need 300000 dollars in funding research. We're moving onwards! TO THE FUTURE!"

/sarcasm

[creegirl9]

pretty mean to mess up the birds like that

[IcyKitty]

I don't think they needed to modify the bird's brains to figure this one out.

After several summers of birdwatching, you can hear adult cardinals teach their babies songs. It was amazing to hear the "babbling" at first and then after several days to hear the baby repeat the parent's song.

I didn't need to remove a part of a bird's brain to figure this out.

[ccaptorchen]

thats nice, birdwatching is fun. did you find out which part of the brain is responsible for learning by birdwatching? if so please publish a paper with the data, so they won't have to do this again.

[IcyKitty]

After a couple hundred years of medical research on the human body, I do believe they have already figured out which part of the brain speech and the development of speech is located.

[Kyberspawn]

WTF little birdie lobotomies?

[DeletedDelusion]

I thought the same.

I find it sad to say the least that these poor creatures have to suffer. How relevant is that stuff they got out of these experiments?

How does this help to understand how the human brain works?

[giansideros]

Behavioural psychologists have long theorised that brain learns by random exploration, says Frank Johnson, a neuroscientist at Florida State University in Tallahassee.

Learning through randomness is likely to be a common theme, Fee says. The twitches of baby rats or the squirms of human babies could be the brain's way of learning its map of the body. "Pretty much anything we do could be an example," he says.

If you're offended, just look up the experiment or use the link under the description.

[poseidon129266]

evolution

[ccaptorchen]

"How does this help to understand how the human brain works?"

Just a guess, people with language learning disability, knowing the location of the problem is a start. I'm sure they didn't do this experiment for fun.

[minesajd]

yeah, hang on a sec, they did just say after they removed the part of the brain ...

[Sweatybus]

I'm starting to wonder about the ethics of these videos...

[Birdtrooper]

Well wonder no more my friend, you'll be happy to know that they're not torturing the birds, they're benignly neurologically modifying them for scientific research. Besides, it's not as if the birds care or have the mental capacity to care

[creegirl9]

I sure if the bird had a choice, it would choose not to have that done.

[Birdtrooper]

I sure that's not even a plausible scenario seeing as it's just an unmindful bird to begin with, so it cannot comprehend what's been done anymore than when it goes to sleep. If the semi-sapient American Idol competitors don't have the mental capacity to know they can't sing; then I have a difficult time believing that a lobotomized bird will ever be the wiser

Although you seem to have a valid-argument this reminds me of the time as a child when a kid got angry at me for crushing a baby plant

[creegirl9]

unmindful??? For example, are you aware that crows, parrots, etc are some of the most intelligent creatures on earth? The USE TOOLS. One of the most significant markers for intelligence. you seem to think that because its not as intelligent as you... and that is questionable... that a bird has no right to a decent unmolested life. Your lack of empathy is alarming

[zqueenbean]

Benign surgery is an oxymoron, don't you agree? Now, do you know if the finch's song is involved in atracting a mate, most certainly they announce their territory vocally. Maybe you can imagine how that would have a negative effect on their short short lives

[Birdtrooper]

Based on what surgery is; no I don't agree at all. Does the finch experience a resulting sadness ?

[zqueenbean]

Even "simple surgeries" have risks, that is why people sign releases. I don' know if the post-surgical finch experiences sadness-- the behavior changes other than the lack of song have not been discussed. However, depressive behavior has been observed in captive or domesticated birds, fish and other animals, so it is not a stretch to consider that these adult babbling finches could experience what we would label frustration, confusion or depression .

[Birdtrooper]

Another good question then is, do the many mammalian agricultural animals kept from mating, experience a sadness. I suppose they may experience sadness but I don't quite believe that these birds do from this. I'm not sure how surgical risk counts benign surgery as an actual oxymoron, particularly when they're done for the purpose of medical alleviation. An illness is malignant; often surgery is the only solution to the problem so it almost certainly can't be intrinsically an oxymoron but eh

[chronodyne]

whao u use a lots of big wordz

[LoXenSci]

To birdtrooper:

yak yak yak blah blah duh duh

[southchiboi]

Right! I thought I was only one thinkin' that.

[poseidon129266]

Far worse has been done/ is being done to rodents on a scale orders of magnitude greater.

Incidence of ethics complaints on neurological experiments on lab rats I image are far less, though, heh.