What imitating an iconic robot reveals on allospecific vocal imitation in parrots and starlings | Scientific Reports

This study compared nine parrot species and European starlings on their ability to imitate monophonic and multiphonic sounds created for the Star Wars character R2-D2. These complex synthesizer sounds allow for a strong comparative analysis with the same spectral complexity imitated by multiple species. Our results show that starlings have a higher accuracy when imitating multiphonic sounds than parrots