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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Mar 28, 2026

Author Spotlight: Exploring Neural Correlates of Defensive Behaviors in Fear Learning and Extinction

Author Spotlight: Exploring Neural Correlates of Defensive Behaviors in Fear Learning and Extinction

Published on: December 15, 2023

Hearing is believing: Birds learn fear.

Christopher B Sturdy^1,2, Darren S Proppe³

¹Department of Psychology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada. csturdy@ualberta.ca.

Learning & Behavior

|December 19, 2015

Summary

Animals can learn to associate new sounds with danger. Superb fairy-wrens demonstrated this by learning a novel vocalization signaled a predator, proving vocal eavesdropping can involve learned threat associations.

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Area of Science:

Animal behavior
Bioacoustics
Ecology

Background:

Animals often eavesdrop on vocalizations of others to gain information about their environment.
Previous research has not experimentally confirmed if animals can learn new associations between a signal and a threat.

Purpose of the Study:

To experimentally demonstrate if animals can learn to associate a novel vocalization with a predator.

Main Methods:

Field experiment conducted with superb fairy-wrens.
Introduction of a novel vocalization.
Observation of the birds' responses to the novel sound in relation to predator presence.

Main Results:

Superb fairy-wrens learned to associate the novel vocalization with the presence of a predator.
This demonstrates a learned response to an arbitrary signal indicating danger.

Conclusions:

Vocal eavesdropping in animals can extend to learning new associations between signals and threats.
This finding has significant implications for understanding animal communication and predator-prey dynamics.