Japanese Tit - Parus minor

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Japanese Tit - Parus minor



Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Passeriformes
Family: Paridae
Genus: Parus
Species: Parus minor



Distributions of Parus minor (blue-green), Parus major (orange-red), and Parus cinereus (grey)

The Japanese tit (Parus minor), also known as the Oriental tit, is a passerine bird which replaces the similar great tit in Japan and the Russian Far East beyond the Amur River, including the Kuril Islands. Until recently, this species was classified as a subspecies of Great Tit (Parus major), but studies indicated that the two species coexist in the Russian Far East without intermingling or frequent hybridization.

The species made headlines in March 2016, when Suzuki et al. reported in Nature Communications that they had found experimental evidence for compositional syntax in bird calls, marking the first such evidence for that type of syntax in nonhuman animals.

From Carnivora.

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Snake alarm call makes birds scan for approaching predators.



The Japanese tit scans the ground for any approaching snakes
PNAS

DAILY NEWS 29 January 2018
By New Scientist staff and Press Association

When we hear a sound associated with a particular object, we are primed to see that object too. The ability to visualise something in this way was once thought to be unique to humans. But some birds seem to have that ability as well, a study has found.

When the Japanese tit hears a rattling alarm call like that of a snake, it responds as if a snake was nearby and reacts to objects that might be moving like a snake.

Scientists used a wooden stick to demonstrate the same talent in the Japanese tit, a songbird that produces particular alarm calls only when it encounters dangerous snakes.

In a series of experiments, recordings of snake-specific calls were played while the birds approached a stick being moved in a serpentine fashion up a tree trunk or along the ground.

The birds responded as if threatened, but ignored the stick if other non-snake alarm calls were played or the stick’s movement was not snake-like enough.

On the lookout

“These birds do not respond to the calls in a uniform way, but appear to retrieve a snake image and then decide how to deal with the predator according to the circumstance,” says team leader Toshitaka Suzuki, from the Centre for Ecological Research at Kyoto University, Japan.

“With a snake’s image in mind, tits can efficiently search out a snake regardless of its spatial position.”

When they meet a real snake, Japanese tits typically go on the offensive, hovering over the reptile while spreading their wings and tail to deter it from attacking.

Faced with a snake-like moving stick, the birds reacted in the same way but their distraction behaviour was more limited.

“They may have realised that the stick was not a real snake once they got close enough,” says Suzuki.

Many animals, including monkeys and meerkats, have been shown to produce calls that warn of specific predators or share the discovery of particular kinds of food.

www.newscientist.com/article/2159745-snake-alarm-call-makes-birds-scan-for-approaching-predators/




Journal Reference:
Toshitaka N. Suzuki Alarm calls evoke a visual search image of a predator in birds PNAS 2018; published ahead of print January 29, 2018, doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1718884115

Abstract
One of the core features of human speech is that words cause listeners to retrieve corresponding visual mental images. However, whether vocalizations similarly evoke mental images in animal communication systems is surprisingly unknown. Japanese tits (Parus minor) produce specific alarm calls when and only when encountering a predatory snake. Here, I show that simply hearing these calls causes tits to become more visually perceptive to objects resembling snakes. During playback of snake-specific alarm calls, tits approach a wooden stick being moved in a snake-like fashion. However, tits do not respond to the same stick when hearing other call types or if the stick’s movement is dissimilar to that of a snake. Thus, before detecting a real snake, tits retrieve its visual image from snake-specific alarm calls and use this to search out snakes. This study provides evidence for a call-evoked visual search image in a nonhuman animal, offering a paradigm to explore the cognitive basis for animal vocal communication in the wild.

www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/01/25/1718884115

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