The Basic Features of Song Learning
Nine males song sparrows were collected from the wild from four different broods when they were around 4 to 6 days old. They were raised by people until they were weaned at 33 to 35 days old and then were placed into individual wire-mesh cages. Live tutors were used in this experiment. Four wild-caught adult male song sparrows were used as the tutors. The tutors were placed into flight aviaries and the subject's cages were placed adjacent to the aviaries, so that they could have visual contact with one of the tutors, while still being able to hear the other three singing. Also, the subjects were rotated so that their visual contact with one tutor varied between the tutors. The subjects were there when they were 33 to 94 days old, with the assumption that their sensitive phase lay some time in this time period.
When the subjects started singing the next spring, their repertoires were analyzed. The average was seven song types per subject. This does correspond with birds raised exclusively in the wild by their parents. Eight of the nine subjects learned songs from two or more of the tutors and later imitated these songs.
In similar experiments in which some birds are exposed to tutors and some are raised in isolation, those birds that were exposed to tutors almost always tend to imitate pieces and even complete songs. Those birds raised in isolation always sang isolate songs. These isolate songs were similar to each other and consist of much more structurally simpler songs than males raised with normal song exposure.
重点词汇：
song sparrows: 北美歌雀
broods：窝
aviary：鸟舍
subject：实验的对象
adjacent to：与…连接的
rotated：旋转的
repertoires：整段乐曲
correspond with：相符合，相一致
exclusively：专门的，排外的
isolation：孤立，隔离
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