
Okanoya was brought up in rural Japan
surrounded by farm animals as well as his own menagerie of pet hamsters,
turtles, hermit crabs, chipmunks and finches. "As a child, I loved
animals more than humans," he says. That he ended up studying birds is
hardly surprising. But what he has discovered certainly is. He set out
to explore how singing cements the intense bond between pairs of
Bengalese finches and underpins their devoted parenting. Instead, his
experiments might have implications for one of evolution's most enduring
mysteries: the emergence of human language.
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