Auditory scene analysis in European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris):: Discrimination of song segments, their segregation from multiple and reversed conspecific songs, and evidence for conspecific song categorization

The ability of male European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) to perceive conspecific song amid a variety of background distracter conditions was investigated. In Experiment 1, test starlings rapidly discriminated 10 song segments produced by conspecific Starling A from 10 song segments produced by Starling B. Experiment 2 demonstrated that birds maintained the A vs. B discrimination against a background of song from a novel singer, Starling C. Experiment 3 demonstrated that birds could discriminate song segments from Starling A and Starling B amid superimposed distracter songs from 4 conspecifics. Experiment 4 demonstrated that the Starling A vs. Starling B discrimination could be maintained in the presence of starling song played backward. Experiments 1 and 5 suggested that test starlings were treating the A and B songs as open-ended, possibly abstract, auditory categories. Thus, starlings identify and discriminate conspecific songs amid many types of conspecific distracters. The results are well described by principles of auditory scene analysis.