Open Access Open Access  Restricted Access Subscription Access

Comparing the Imitating Capabilities of Parrots and Crows with Human Beings Using COMSOL Multiphysics


Affiliations
1 I. K. Gujral Punjab Technical University, Kapurthala 144 603, India
2 Electronics and Communication Engineering Department, Beant College of Engineering and Technology, Gurdaspur 143 521, India
3 Department of Electronics, University of Jammu, Jammu 180 006, India
 

Speech signal is a natural means of communication. It uses small units of sound to convey feelings and messages. Birds also use sound signals to express their emotions. Some birds, like parrots and crows, are capable of imitating the speech of other animals. The aim of this study is to compare the imitating capabilities of these birds with those of human beings. The software COMSOL Multiphysics has been used for investigating the effect of dimensional modifications of the vocal tract on the system output. The analysis of the results shows that the acoustic spaces used by human beings, parrots and crows are not overlapping, but similar in shape. Further, maximum formant scattering is observed in human beings and minimum for parrots. The results may be important for understanding the vocal tract modulation, for example, to generate artificial food calls to assemble the birds for feeding medicines to avoid spread of diseases, specifically by parrots and crows as they try to settle down near human civilizations.

Keywords

Birds Calls, Cardinal Vowels, Imitation, Speech Production.
User
Notifications
Font Size

  • O’Saughnessy, D., Speech Communication – Human and Machine, Addison-Wesley, New York, USA, 1987.
  • Catchpole, C. K. and Slater, P. J. B., Bird Song: Biological Themes and Variations, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1995.
  • Kumar, A., Acoustic communication in birds: differences in songs and calls, their production and biological significance. Resonance, 2003, 8, 844–855.
  • Singh, R., Kumar, A. and Lehana, P., Effect of bandwidth modifications on the quality of speech imitated by Alexandrine and Indian Ringneck parrots. Int. J. Speech Technol., 2017, 20, 659–672; doi: 10.1007/s10772-017-9437-x
  • Ali, S., The Book of Indian Birds, The Bombay Natural History Society, Bombay, 1943.
  • Forshaw, J. M., Parrots of the World: An Identification Guide, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, USA, 2006.
  • Fitch, W. T., The evolution of language: a comparative review. Biol. Philos., 2005, 20, 193–230; doi:10.1007/s10539-005-5597-1.
  • Chamberlain, D. R. and Cornwell, G. W., Selected vocalizations of the common crow. Auk, 1971, 88, 613–634.
  • Larsen, O. N. and Goller, F., Direct observation of syringeal muscle function in songbirds and a parrot. J. Exp. Biol., 2002, 205, 25–35.
  • Nottebohm, F., Phonation in the orange-winged Amazon parrot, Amazona amazonica. J. Comp. Physiol., 1976, 108, 157–170.
  • Patterson, D. K. and Pepperberg, I. M., A comparative study of human and parrot phonation: acoustic and articulatory correlates of vowels. J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 1994, 96, 634–648.
  • Homberger, D. G., The lingual apparatus of the African grey parrot, Psittacus erithacus Linne (Aves: Psittacidae): description and theoretical mechanical analysis. Ornithol. Monogr., 1986, 39, 1–233.
  • Warren, D. K., Patterson, D. K. and Pepperberg, I. M., Mechanisms of American English vowel production in a grey parrot (Psittacus erithacus). Auk, 1996, 113, 41–58.
  • Beckers, G. J. L., Nelson, B. S. and Suthers, R. A., Vocal-tract filtering by lingual articulation in a parrot. Curr. Biol., 2004, 14, 1592–1597.
  • Pepperberg, I. M., Vocal learning in Grey parrots (Psittacus erithacus): effect of social interaction reference and context. Auk, 1994, 111, 300–313.
  • Singh, R., Kumar, A. and Lehana, P., Investigations of the quality of speech imitated by Alexandrine parrot (Psittacula eupatria). Circuits Syst. Signal Process., 2017, 36, 2292–2314; doi:10.1007/s00034-016-0395-3.
  • Goodwin, D., Crows of the World, British Museum, Natural History, London, UK, 1976.
  • Singh, R., Kumar, A., Singh, G. and Lehana, P., Estimation of phonemes in the calls of crows using vector quantization. Int. J. Comput. Linguist. Nat. Lang. Process., 2014, 3, 565–571.
  • Reaume, T., The American Crow, Naturally, An illustrated ebook, 2013.
  • Emery, N. J. and Clayton, N. S., The mentality of crows: convergent evolution of intelligence in corvids and apes. Science, 2004, 306, 1903–1907; doi:10.1126/science.1098410.
  • Prior, H., Schwarz, A. and Güntürkün, O., Mirror-induced behavior in the magpie (Pica pica): evidence of self-recognition. PLoS. Biol., 2008, 6, 1642–1650; doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0060202.
  • Forbushe, E. H., Birds of Massachusetts and other New England States, Norwood, Massachusetts Dept. Agr. 1927, vol. 2.
  • Craven, S. R., Crows around the home. Passenger Pigeon, 1990, 52, 315–318,
  • Gross, A. O., Eastern crow. In Life Histories of North American Jays, Crows, and Titmice (partial author and ed. Bent, A. C.), United States National Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Bulletin 191, Washington, District of Columbia, 1946, pp. 226–259.
  • Ryall, C., The pest status of the Indian house crow Corvus splendens in Mombasa and a survey of its expansion of range in coastal Kenya. In Proceedings of the 7th Pan African Ornithological Congress, Nairobi, 1988, pp. 303–310.
  • Cooper, J. E., Health studies on the Indian house crow (Corvus splendens). Avian Pathol., 1996, 25, 381–386; doi:10.1080/03079459608419148.
  • Roy, P., Venugopalan, A. T. and Manvell, R., Isolation of Newcastle disease virus from an Indian house crow. Trop. Anim. Health Prod., 1998, 30, 177–178.
  • Kamel, A. M., Potential impacts of invasive house crows (Corvus splendens) bird species in Ismailia Governorate, Egypt: ecology, control and risk management. J. Life Sci. Technol., 2014, 2, 86–89.
  • http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/060509_crows.html
  • Fraser, D. L., Aguilar, G., Nagle, W. and Ryall, C., The house crow (Corvus splendens): a threat to New Zealand? ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf., 2015, 4, 725–740; doi:10.3390/ijgi4020725.
  • Fant, G., Acoustic Theory of Speech Production, Mouton, The Hague, The Netherlands, 1960.
  • Flanagan, J. L., Speech Analysis, Synthesis and Perception, Springer-Verlag, New York, USA, 1972.
  • Rabiner, L. R. and Schafer, R. W., Digital Processing of Speech Signals, Prentice-Hall, 1978.
  • Claes, T., Dologlou, I., Bosch, L. and Compernolle, D. V., A novel feature transformation for vocal tract length normalization in automatic speech recognition. IEEE Trans. Speech Audio Process., 1998, 6, 549–557.
  • Hoese, W. J., Podos, J., Boetticher, N. C. and Nowicki. S., Vocal tract function in birdsong production: experimental manipulation of beak movements. J. Exp. Biol., 2000, 203, 1845–1855.
  • Nelson, B. S., Beckers, G. J. L. and Suthers, R. A., Vocal tract filtering and sound radiation in a songbird. J. Exp. Biol., 2005, 208, 297–308.
  • Nowicki, S., Vocal tract resonances in oscine bird sound production: evidence from birdsongs in a helium atmosphere. Nature, 1987, 325, 53–55.
  • Podos, J., Southall, J. A. and Rossi-Santos, M. R., Vocal mechanics in Darwin’s finches: correlation of beak gape and song frequency. J. Exp. Biol., 2004, 207, 607–619.
  • Westneat, M. W., Long, J. H., Hoese, W. and Nowicki, S., Kinematics of birdsong: functional correlation of cranial movements and acoustic features in sparrows. J. Exp. Biol., 1993, 182, 147–171.
  • Fletcher, N. H. and Tarnopolsky, A., Acoustics of the avian vocal tract. J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 1999, 105, 35–49.
  • Casey, R. M. and Gaunt, A. S., Theoretical models of the avian syrinx. J. Theor. Biol., 1985, 116, 45–64.
  • Doya, K. and Sejnowski, T. J., A novel reinforcement model of birdsong vocalization learning. In Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (eds Tesauro, G., Touretzky, D. and Leen, T.), The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1995, vol. 7, pp. 101–108.
  • Larsen, O. N. and Goller, F., Role of syringeal vibrations in bird vocalizations. Proc. R. Soc. London Ser. B, 1999, 266, 1609–1615.
  • Gardner, T., Gecchi, G. and Magnasco, M., Simple motor gestures for birdsongs. Phys. Rev. Lett., 2001, 87.
  • Laje, R., Gardner, T. J. and Mindlin, G. B., Neuromuscular control of vocalization in birdsong, a model. Phys. Rev. E., 2002, 65, 051921-1-051921-8.
  • Malek Laissaoui, A. et al., Current density and internal electric field in a model of the human body exposed to ELF electric and magnetic fields. In Proceedings of the 2014 International Symposium on Electromagnetic Compatibility, Gothenburg, Sweden, 1–4 September 2014, pp. 974–979.
  • Rocke, S. and Persad, J., Analysis of magnetically-coupled human body communications. In Proceedings of the 2015 COMSOL Conference, Boston, USA, 2015.
  • COMSOL Multiphysics User’s Guide, May 2012.
  • Stevens, K. N., Acoustic Phonetics, MIT Press, Cambridge, London, UK, 1998.
  • Ohms, V. R., Beckers, G. J., ten Cate, L. C. and Suthers, R. A., Vocal tract articulation revisited: the case of the monk parakeet. J. Exp. Biol., 2012, 215, 85–92.
  • Fagerlund, S., Automatic recognition of bird species by their sounds, M.S. thesis, Helsinki University Technology, Espoo, Finland, 2004.

Abstract Views: 404

PDF Views: 116




  • Comparing the Imitating Capabilities of Parrots and Crows with Human Beings Using COMSOL Multiphysics

Abstract Views: 404  |  PDF Views: 116

Authors

Randhir Singh
I. K. Gujral Punjab Technical University, Kapurthala 144 603, India
Ajay Kumar
Electronics and Communication Engineering Department, Beant College of Engineering and Technology, Gurdaspur 143 521, India
Parveen Kumar Lehana
Department of Electronics, University of Jammu, Jammu 180 006, India

Abstract


Speech signal is a natural means of communication. It uses small units of sound to convey feelings and messages. Birds also use sound signals to express their emotions. Some birds, like parrots and crows, are capable of imitating the speech of other animals. The aim of this study is to compare the imitating capabilities of these birds with those of human beings. The software COMSOL Multiphysics has been used for investigating the effect of dimensional modifications of the vocal tract on the system output. The analysis of the results shows that the acoustic spaces used by human beings, parrots and crows are not overlapping, but similar in shape. Further, maximum formant scattering is observed in human beings and minimum for parrots. The results may be important for understanding the vocal tract modulation, for example, to generate artificial food calls to assemble the birds for feeding medicines to avoid spread of diseases, specifically by parrots and crows as they try to settle down near human civilizations.

Keywords


Birds Calls, Cardinal Vowels, Imitation, Speech Production.

References





DOI: https://doi.org/10.18520/cs%2Fv114%2Fi11%2F2343-2352