Can birds learn songs without a tutor? Carrie Straight 06.01.01 Some young birds go through a time when they learn and practice their songs. One fact that most people don’t know is that in many songbird species (Order Passeriformes) the female birds sing too. Many female songs are different from the males. One scientist, Ayako Yamaguchi, wanted to learn more about this and chose Northern cardinals, Cardinalis cardinalis, to use as a study species. He wanted to know if young cardinals could teach themselves to sing. He took 2 female and 3 male young northern cardinals into the laboratory. Each lived in a separate cage, but didn’t get to hear cardinal songs like they would in the nest. He systematically observed the birds as they aged. When these young birds grew up not listening to an adult song, female young rarely sang, but males started singing. Males' songs even came close to songs that adult male cardinals sing. Yamaguchi, Ayako. 2000. Sex differences in vocal learning in birds. Nature 411: 257-258. ©2001 The Aurora Collection, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Site Development by: Interactive Multimedia. Inc.