Birds and humans share fundamental song and speech patterns, study finds

McGill University researchers have identified "universal" vocal patterns across hundreds of bird species and found that many of the same patterns also appear in human song and speech from cultures around the world. The patterns include small pitch intervals, regular and predictab

McGill University researchers have identified "universal" vocal patterns across hundreds of bird species and found that many of the same patterns also appear in human song and speech from cultures around the world. The patterns include small pitch intervals, regular and predictable rhythms, and phrase-final elongation, in which the last utterance in a phrase tends to be longer than the others.