All the world’s birdsong, from the trill of a European wren to the complex calls of a tropical bellbird, is built from just eight basic sounds, scientists in France have discovered. After analysing more than 100,000 songs from 3,000 species, a team from the University of Saint-Etienne found that every bird uses the same acoustic building blocks – three types of trill, three types of whistle, chaotic notes and harmonies. They call these eight fundamental sounds “motifs”. “The diversity is huge,” said Quentin Bacquelé, the lead researcher and a PhD student at the university. “And if you go to Asia, Africa, Amazonia, you will hear totally different songs.” Yet beneath that variety, the team uncovered what they describe as “a simplicity underlying the spectacular diversity of birdsongs”.
The study relied on a global database of recordings uploaded by thousands of volunteers, allowing the researchers to analyse about 116,000 songs from more than 3,000 species. Using artificial intelligence, they compared thousands of songs to each other to find the patterns that connect them. The scientists then identified how each bird’s environment shaped its choice of motifs. Birds adapted for tropical forests, for instance, use simpler motifs such as flat whistles – likely because these sounds help them be heard through dense vegetation and the busy, biodiverse soundscape. “It’s a kind of evolutionary trade-off,” Bacquelé explained. Complex songs packed with ultrafast trills and dense information are more common in temperate forests, where birds communicate at closer range. In complex environments, a very elaborate song is hard to transmit over long distances, even though it carries more information.
“Scientists analysed 100,000+ songs from 3,000 species and found all birdsong uses eight fundamental sound motifs.”
The findings link every bird’s song directly to its evolutionary environment – a connection that, Bacquelé noted, is now being transformed by human activity. “I think this…” he said, leaving the thought unfinished as the study points toward the possibility that changing landscapes are altering the very soundscape of birdsong.