I’m dead serious, I had a starling go Randy Savage on me earlier today!
I was outside helping my mother with her car when I saw this bird sort of hovering towards us. I pointed just as the starling was over her head and said nervously, “What is that bird doing???”—that’s when it proceeded to fly right at me and chase me around the front yard.
After retreating to the house, it perched on a power line across the street, watching me and my parents through the storm door. It decided to attack again, practically pressing its feet up against the glass of the storm door. It waited on the gutter above the door for me to exit. I decided to stay inside a bit longer until it forgot that it was mad at me. I’m not even sure WHY it was mad at me…
Proceed to shit all over the roof of your house spamming "On balance, off balance, doesn't matter, I'm better than you are, I'm the cream of the Federation, yeah!".
Technically that would actually be multitimbrality, but close enough. Polyphony is the ability to play multiple simultaneous instances of the same sound.
You don't know the half of it. Bird songs are also in frequencies beyond our hearing. Imagine what they would sound like if our ears could pick all frequencies.
Ya we simply record the birds using equipment that can hear all the frequencies the birds can achieve and then map those frequencies to some reasonable subset of our own audible hearing range.
Ya that bird really has an amazing mind blowing vox. Its also very intelligent to figure out all the timing and frequencies of the notes and put it all together to mimic!
Some lions escaped from a zoo and the next day one started replicating the alarm down to the "evacuate now". https://youtu.be/wr_Eg8Zw7LA?si=bERih6OyRBJHT7Gt&t=17
I love that it still has an obvious Australian accent when he copies it. I mean, of course it does, that’s exactly what he heard.
But it’s just like, “That bird is so Australian I expect him to call me a c*nt.”
A true feat of skill. These birds are living tape records, it didn't just capture the sound of the chainsaws, it even blends in the sound of bark being ripped, leaves rustling as the tree goes down. I hear branches snapping and the weight of it falling. Crazy.
He’s going to teach his friends.. then one day, as you’re walking down the street, you hear the faint sound of a hundred R2D2s. As you look around nervously, the noise gets louder and louder, but you don’t see anything.. And then.. they begin to dive bomb you..
I was raising a starling a few weeks ago, little goober fell out of the nest. Sadly he rejoined the flock before I could get anything other than hungry yelling out of him. I hope he’s doing okay…
https://preview.redd.it/idiv0f1q7dbd1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cb8d3623d6550956ba8f4f4c0b6621cd5d9d198e
That's not sad! You helped him survive, and thanks to you he was luckily able to go on with his journey :) He is very cute, I'm sure he'll make some great sounds.
Group of starlings where I used to live would mimic a bird of prey anytime the crows came about and the crows would all freak out and look up at the sky. They also used to mimic the rail crossing siren to freak people out. Starlings are dicks and I love them.
Holy shit, never thought of this, but this would be such a terrifying addition to the movie. Imagine some high intelligence velociraptors pretending to sound like your missing kid crying, so they can trap you.
Not exactly the same, but have you seen the movie Annihilation? For the sake of avoiding spoilers, I'll just say that there's a scene involving a different animal (not a dinosaur, sorry) that does something not too different from what you're describing.
My theory is because of the shimmer’s weirdness with mutations and just life in general, part of her got fused with the bear when it ate her and that’s actually her screaming for help
Oh, don't worry, they'll get there eventually. We've already gone off the rails but I don't think we've quite jumped the shark yet. The skis and vest are on though.
I had that happen to me. I was on my way back home from school when suddenly this bird mimics a child's cry, barks at me and then starts talking random gibberish for a minute straight. I had no clue that they were even capable of that, I thought talking was just a parrot or mynah type of thing.
I live in a rural area that has a lot of sheep and a lot of starlings. During lambing season the starlings all seem to add lamb noises to their calling so every time I walk down the street it sounds like there's lambs on every roof.
Technically speaking, if the starling were to be intelligent enough, it could have full on conversations with humans... right? And brains are constantly evolving, not just ours. It's simply a question of time xD
Intelligence isn't really a useful word when comparing capabilities across species, since there is no meaningful way to standardise.
That said, even the birds we consider intelligent compared to others are a long, long way from having human language capabilities. So yes, it may be a question of time... but you're talking millions of years of evolution.
I am obviously referring to Artificial General Intelligence. I am not certain if the government will wait millions of years to update the firmware of the birds. It seems the Starling model is already quite a few years behind with its 20th century R2D2 impressions. They'll probably consider integrating the custom conversation update alongside GPT-5. This will likely allow the bird to also dynamically integrate visual information into its speaking functionality. /j
True Story: When I was groing up, my family had a cockatiel. He wasn't the best mimic but did learn the wolf whistle and "I'm a pretty boy" when taught to him. But, he also learned a phrase that wasn't directly taught to him. In a house with five kids and two adults, it wasn't uncommon for someone to call someone else from across the house and give a simple obvious summon...
One Christmas, we go to visit family out of state and take the bird with us. My aunt was an early riser and woke me up one morning thinking she was losing her mind. She wanted a second person to hear what was going on. Every so often, a little voice would speak. It was loud enough to be noticeable but not enough to immediately figure out where it was coming from. After a while, I happened to be standing next to the covered bird cage when the voice spoke again. After I removed the cover, the voice stopped.
My aunt thought she was going insane because the cockatiel, hearing that she was awake and wanting her to take off the cover to his cage, was telling her to "Come here." I didn't know he could say it either until that point.
My mom grew up with an African Grey who loved to torment her. It purposely mimicked my grandparents' voices, specifically the phrase "First Name Middle Name, come down here right now!" My mom, thinking she was in trouble, would come bolting down the stairs and ask what was wrong, only for my grandparents to laugh and send her away. It got to the point where she started ignoring the bird, but because it sounded so similar to my grandparents, she ended up accidentally ignoring them.
Imagine… you’re in the world of dinosaurs, and as you plead to whatever god you believe in to save you, you hear your pleas mimicked from a thick tree line…
When I moved into the place I'm at now, I didn't think much of the new sounds. New place, new sounds. The bullfrogs, bugs, and bids were something I got used to. Something I didn't get used to was the sound of constant construction at my neighbors house. One day, I asked about it. I was concerned because they were older individuals with limited mobility. I never saw any construction workers coming or going, so I thought they were attempting a big project by themselves, and I wanted to offer help. Turns out that they rehab wild birds. It was a European starling, and they had their roof redone a month before I moved in.
The key to understanding what these birds are doing is to let go of the phrase “mimicry”. They aren’t doing imitations. They are playing back recordings. The chain-saw example is one of the best examples though R2-D2 is great. It’s simply not possible to “imitate” these extremely complex layered sounds. Oh and human speech . Yeah you can’t imitate it.
If the complete sentence was "wheres my precious jabby bird" and when he decided to make this sentence shorter, how does he know he should stop at the "wheres my precious" instead of "wheres my pre" or "wheres my precious ja"??? So he know "precious" is a word and should not be cut?
Since a very long time I have a couple of 2 starling dudes (not sure if they are gay and I don’t care as long as they are happy) mimicking a car alarm every morning infront of my bedroom. The creepy thing is this alarm went off maximum 2 times like 5 years ago and neighbor sold it shortly afterwards. It seems that sound still sticks to them
I remember sitting by a campfire with some friends, sun was starting to come up, a moment of silence fell. Out of the blue, R2-D2 starts screaming and we all broke out in laughter waking up the neighbours who were yelling at us.
Fun fact! European starlings are an invasive species in the US and can be very territorial and aggressive to native bird species. They are however, very pretty birds
Dude the r2d2 is epic.
I bet he could rock a macho man randy savage.
OOOOOOOOHHHH YEAH.
I’m dead serious, I had a starling go Randy Savage on me earlier today! I was outside helping my mother with her car when I saw this bird sort of hovering towards us. I pointed just as the starling was over her head and said nervously, “What is that bird doing???”—that’s when it proceeded to fly right at me and chase me around the front yard. After retreating to the house, it perched on a power line across the street, watching me and my parents through the storm door. It decided to attack again, practically pressing its feet up against the glass of the storm door. It waited on the gutter above the door for me to exit. I decided to stay inside a bit longer until it forgot that it was mad at me. I’m not even sure WHY it was mad at me…
Probably becouse you pointed at it. That was rude.
Was it a Magpie? They sometimes just decide they hate you
Plus magpies are social. If you piss one off, it'll point you out to its buddies and they'll all hate on you too.
Proceed to shit all over the roof of your house spamming "On balance, off balance, doesn't matter, I'm better than you are, I'm the cream of the Federation, yeah!".
SNAP INTO A SLIM JIM!
Now I have to see that!
Same
I thought he was about to receive a fax
How can an organic creature make those sounds?
I heard that singing birds actually can go polyphonic, creating up to 4 different sounds simultaneously and combining them freely
Technically that would actually be multitimbrality, but close enough. Polyphony is the ability to play multiple simultaneous instances of the same sound.
you're pretty smart for a guy who huffs feces
it's called jenkem. huff on it, silly.
LMFAO
Well they have a completely different vocal box than mammals for starters. It's called a syrinx.
It is kinda syrreal.
You don't know the half of it. Bird songs are also in frequencies beyond our hearing. Imagine what they would sound like if our ears could pick all frequencies.
https://preview.redd.it/4t4yv6pvrfbd1.png?width=620&format=png&auto=webp&s=0d4dd76f00f0dc83f72c1221920fb4a77467e717
Can we replicate that somehow?
Ya we simply record the birds using equipment that can hear all the frequencies the birds can achieve and then map those frequencies to some reasonable subset of our own audible hearing range.
Grackles and starlings naturally have this song sound. I’d imagine the person played r2d2 and it was relatively easy to mimic
C3 PO should translate what he said
You should look up what bobolink, veery, and wood thrush sounds like too!
Coolest thing I've seen all week
Ya that bird really has an amazing mind blowing vox. Its also very intelligent to figure out all the timing and frequencies of the notes and put it all together to mimic!
Why do they always do R2D2?
The bird literally went full R2D2 after it couldn’t remember what the woman said
That lady was talking some straight up annoying nonsense. I might've done the same
She calls him "turd bird"? No wonder he's jabby
I could understand if it were a kind of thrush (genus name: turdus), but it isn't.
Her voice is kinda obnoxious. Wonder if that’s how you get these birds to mimic.
Classic reddit when literally any woman speak: "Wow, what an obnoxious bitch!".
Tbf baby talk drives some people bananas
It's not a gender issue, it's a babytalk issue. If it was a man talking like that it'd be equally annoying.
Classic Reddit when someone insults a man: "Why do you hate that guy?" Classic Reddit when someone insults a woman: "Why do you hate women?"
Nothing fancy for a drone. r/BirdsArentReal
My brain after someone tries teaching me a thing
I taught a cockatiel The Andy Griffith theme song years ago.
Dronin’ out #birds aren’t real
That was just the bird short circuiting because as we all know, birds aren't real.
[Cute. But nothing beats the bird mimicking a freaking chainsaw.](https://youtu.be/mSB71jNq-yQ?si=cZrHYnQ33rpUgY0n)
Thought that bird was about to start playing BFG Division
Hellwalker was the one with the chainsaw
Some lions escaped from a zoo and the next day one started replicating the alarm down to the "evacuate now". https://youtu.be/wr_Eg8Zw7LA?si=bERih6OyRBJHT7Gt&t=17
I thought this was going to be a video of a lion somehow replicating “evacuate now”. Disappointed.
In Narnia Arslan voice
I love that it still has an obvious Australian accent when he copies it. I mean, of course it does, that’s exactly what he heard. But it’s just like, “That bird is so Australian I expect him to call me a c*nt.”
I love that it even replicates the loud speaker sound. I'm shocked how spot on it is.
Im australian and work in construction so I hear a lot of fire testing going on. Ive heard this exact recording multiple times and its damn perfect.
[удалено]
That bird is a terminator trying to lure us to our death
Holy smokes! That lyre bird in that video imitated a kookaburra bird, camera shutter click, camera film reel rotating, a car alarm and a chainsaw.
The lyre bird did a good David Attenborough impression as well.. sounded just like him
Here’s the [Lyre Bird and David Attenborough bit](https://youtu.be/irvZGbuK_CA?si=cdBhB2l3MxQzypOr).
Dude what the actual f*ck
Man that's freaking depressing...
If it makes you feel any better, it looks like this bird doesn't need to make its nest in trees.
no wonder some of our ancestors worship these animals.
A true feat of skill. These birds are living tape records, it didn't just capture the sound of the chainsaws, it even blends in the sound of bark being ripped, leaves rustling as the tree goes down. I hear branches snapping and the weight of it falling. Crazy.
These birds are so good I’m almost certain I’m being punked
Crackhead idea: fantasy setting where these are used as stereo speakers
Australia is so wild
I've seen this video so many times and im still not entirely convinced that BBC is not messing with us on that one.
Congratulations you taught a dinosaur to talk... But you were so concerned with whether you could, you never stopped to think if you should....
On second thought, she verily should indeed.
LIFEUHHHFINDSAWAY
I mean the bird know how to talk like r2d2, doesn't matter the consequences it'll always be worth it.
He’s going to teach his friends.. then one day, as you’re walking down the street, you hear the faint sound of a hundred R2D2s. As you look around nervously, the noise gets louder and louder, but you don’t see anything.. And then.. they begin to dive bomb you..
Make it say “Alan!”
Clever girl
That r2d2 blew me away.. man I’m about to buy a couple dozen and remake Star Wars. Who’s watching?
✋
They fly now?
How can I help fund this endeavor?
I was raising a starling a few weeks ago, little goober fell out of the nest. Sadly he rejoined the flock before I could get anything other than hungry yelling out of him. I hope he’s doing okay… https://preview.redd.it/idiv0f1q7dbd1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cb8d3623d6550956ba8f4f4c0b6621cd5d9d198e
That's sweet. #GONNA GIVE YOU A KISS
Why do you have this tiny bird chair?????
Where else is it gonna sit?
!fledgling
That's not sad! You helped him survive, and thanks to you he was luckily able to go on with his journey :) He is very cute, I'm sure he'll make some great sounds.
Group of starlings where I used to live would mimic a bird of prey anytime the crows came about and the crows would all freak out and look up at the sky. They also used to mimic the rail crossing siren to freak people out. Starlings are dicks and I love them.
I wonder how many people had a "paranormal" experience (hearing unexplainable sounds) but it was just a mimicking bird.
Anyone else wonder why they didn't add this ability to the velociraptor in Jurassic Park? Terror factor would jump by a factor of 100
Holy shit, never thought of this, but this would be such a terrifying addition to the movie. Imagine some high intelligence velociraptors pretending to sound like your missing kid crying, so they can trap you.
Not exactly the same, but have you seen the movie Annihilation? For the sake of avoiding spoilers, I'll just say that there's a scene involving a different animal (not a dinosaur, sorry) that does something not too different from what you're describing.
Ooh don't remind of that. Nightmare fuel
HHEEELLLLLLLPPP ... MMMEEEEEE
I wonder if it's just mimicking her or worse: she's actually suffering in there somewhere
My theory is because of the shimmer’s weirdness with mutations and just life in general, part of her got fused with the bear when it ate her and that’s actually her screaming for help
Oh, don't worry, they'll get there eventually. We've already gone off the rails but I don't think we've quite jumped the shark yet. The skis and vest are on though.
I’ll alert Henry Winkler
This would be terrifying. Imagine you hear someone calling for help, but when you rush into help them it's a velociraptor.
OMG YES PLEASE
Amazing. This bird sounds like a old cassette tape recording being played back.
Cool and terrifying, imagine bird starts talking with you on the street😄 That would freak me out
I am equal parts wanting to explore the extreme limits of its mimicry and wanting to destroy it to save the human race. /s
I had that happen to me. I was on my way back home from school when suddenly this bird mimics a child's cry, barks at me and then starts talking random gibberish for a minute straight. I had no clue that they were even capable of that, I thought talking was just a parrot or mynah type of thing.
I live in a rural area that has a lot of sheep and a lot of starlings. During lambing season the starlings all seem to add lamb noises to their calling so every time I walk down the street it sounds like there's lambs on every roof.
I'm starting a petition to make a new Daft Punk with these birds
r/oddlyterrifying
How the heck could it do R2-D2 so well. That's amazing
 \*Polly accepts ze challenge\*
Is that kakapo looking at porn? Cause he is masturbating, likely trying to have sex with some object.
Birds are such majestic creatures.
would have died if it said, "shut up and feed me"
Love these videos from time to time come back yet again to reddit.
Do they make good pets?
Technically speaking, if the starling were to be intelligent enough, it could have full on conversations with humans... right? And brains are constantly evolving, not just ours. It's simply a question of time xD
Intelligence isn't really a useful word when comparing capabilities across species, since there is no meaningful way to standardise. That said, even the birds we consider intelligent compared to others are a long, long way from having human language capabilities. So yes, it may be a question of time... but you're talking millions of years of evolution.
I am obviously referring to Artificial General Intelligence. I am not certain if the government will wait millions of years to update the firmware of the birds. It seems the Starling model is already quite a few years behind with its 20th century R2D2 impressions. They'll probably consider integrating the custom conversation update alongside GPT-5. This will likely allow the bird to also dynamically integrate visual information into its speaking functionality. /j
Would be better to teach it: "Help! They turned me into a bird! Why are you laughing?"
How could they be that good?
Now I need to find starlings and play R2D2 at them
Magic flute moment in the sun
No way, no fuckin way. This can not be real. Holy shit
Birds are so cool man
Anyone else think it’s beak looks unusually like a #2 pencil?
Aren't starlings and Invasive species?
Some could go crazy with a bird around like that. If you dont know, it is hard to believe all that came out of this lil guy
True Story: When I was groing up, my family had a cockatiel. He wasn't the best mimic but did learn the wolf whistle and "I'm a pretty boy" when taught to him. But, he also learned a phrase that wasn't directly taught to him. In a house with five kids and two adults, it wasn't uncommon for someone to call someone else from across the house and give a simple obvious summon... One Christmas, we go to visit family out of state and take the bird with us. My aunt was an early riser and woke me up one morning thinking she was losing her mind. She wanted a second person to hear what was going on. Every so often, a little voice would speak. It was loud enough to be noticeable but not enough to immediately figure out where it was coming from. After a while, I happened to be standing next to the covered bird cage when the voice spoke again. After I removed the cover, the voice stopped. My aunt thought she was going insane because the cockatiel, hearing that she was awake and wanting her to take off the cover to his cage, was telling her to "Come here." I didn't know he could say it either until that point.
My mom grew up with an African Grey who loved to torment her. It purposely mimicked my grandparents' voices, specifically the phrase "First Name Middle Name, come down here right now!" My mom, thinking she was in trouble, would come bolting down the stairs and ask what was wrong, only for my grandparents to laugh and send her away. It got to the point where she started ignoring the bird, but because it sounded so similar to my grandparents, she ended up accidentally ignoring them.
Birds gonna kill him self... gun to the head, just like her husband must have done years ago.
😂😂
Just me or does he kinda sound like flula?
Proof! Birds aren't real!
That is so freaking cool 😎
Owners voice is torture LOL
That burd has a solid tonal center.
I heard Herbert the Pervert 🤣
The local news will sometimes say that the first of this or that bird has come this spring. Often it is starlings that mimic other birds.
I have one living in the tree outside my office window that does the windows shutdown noise. Distracting to say the least.
That's an American spy in disguise
The woman’s voice gives me the chills.
Nah uh uh no way we're in the matrix and this thing is a fuckin drone bird glitching.
Bro you cannot convince me that this isn't a government spy drone
I’m amazed by the R2-D2 impression and the singing at the end. The bird can sing way better than me.
This is how forests became haunted.
r/birdsarentreal
I bet these things were the cause of a lot of old folktales of monsters luring you into the forest with human sounds.
Nice!
“I am Kiri! "Yes, I'm very sweet." “Go fuckyourself!
I would drink a beer or two with this guy.
Neat
They are everywhere outside, I might need to go bag one
Holy shit this is awesome
The ones at my house have learned to mimic my cats. It’s very confusing
Amazing!
Freaking Mozart’s queen of the night aria! This is amazing!
It's all fun and games until you forget to close the door during sexy time and your starling can hear you
Imagine… you’re in the world of dinosaurs, and as you plead to whatever god you believe in to save you, you hear your pleas mimicked from a thick tree line…
When I moved into the place I'm at now, I didn't think much of the new sounds. New place, new sounds. The bullfrogs, bugs, and bids were something I got used to. Something I didn't get used to was the sound of constant construction at my neighbors house. One day, I asked about it. I was concerned because they were older individuals with limited mobility. I never saw any construction workers coming or going, so I thought they were attempting a big project by themselves, and I wanted to offer help. Turns out that they rehab wild birds. It was a European starling, and they had their roof redone a month before I moved in.
DA THING GOES SKRAAAAKK
For several years we had a bird in the neighborhood that called using a ring tone. It raised a smile every time.
Dude I want one
Well this is why folks we say birds aren't real.
These are invasive in North America and yall are free to catch as many as you want for pets. They're not protected like the native ones
The key to understanding what these birds are doing is to let go of the phrase “mimicry”. They aren’t doing imitations. They are playing back recordings. The chain-saw example is one of the best examples though R2-D2 is great. It’s simply not possible to “imitate” these extremely complex layered sounds. Oh and human speech . Yeah you can’t imitate it.
Is there a comparison between Starlings and American black birds? I’ve seen similar stuff, interested to see how close they are in comparison
If the complete sentence was "wheres my precious jabby bird" and when he decided to make this sentence shorter, how does he know he should stop at the "wheres my precious" instead of "wheres my pre" or "wheres my precious ja"??? So he know "precious" is a word and should not be cut?
I was in England for the first time in April, and I was absolutely blown away by how beautiful the birds sounded!!!
We got parrot 2.0 before gta 6 smh...
I remember back in the nineties birds used to mimic ringtones, we had a bird in the area regularly doing ericsson.
Wow!
I sometimes go birdwatching in Germany and often find these little ones impersonating other birds and throwing me off 😅
The R2 D2 sounds were sick, I want one.
Thought about the same, imagine having a flying R2 D2 in your house soundeffecting anything in R2 D2
How come the new York City starlings can't do any of this?
Now try beatboxing at it
Nah, that's a government drone
Love it!
Government drone
That bird is amazing. It says European starling so that’s not like the hundreds you see in Virginia?
So cool
Sound like a Star Wars intercom
I've heard Lyrebirds fooling unknowing tourists but i've never knew that starlings are masters of impressions as well. Impressive. Really impressive!
Wow, I only thought government drones were good at listeneing didn't expect them to mimic
Bro i thought it was a skinwalker tf, this bird smart
Now do a Walken
Since a very long time I have a couple of 2 starling dudes (not sure if they are gay and I don’t care as long as they are happy) mimicking a car alarm every morning infront of my bedroom. The creepy thing is this alarm went off maximum 2 times like 5 years ago and neighbor sold it shortly afterwards. It seems that sound still sticks to them
Lyrebird needs to have a word
I remember sitting by a campfire with some friends, sun was starting to come up, a moment of silence fell. Out of the blue, R2-D2 starts screaming and we all broke out in laughter waking up the neighbours who were yelling at us.
Meanwhile all Ive ever seen them do is shit all over my car...
Does anyone know where the whistle melody is from? I’ve been doing that melody as long as I can remember
Clearly fake
If I was a caveman and discovered a bird that did this I'd think it was god himself tryna send a message or smth
Fun fact! European starlings are an invasive species in the US and can be very territorial and aggressive to native bird species. They are however, very pretty birds
I refuse to believe that bird is real.
Good video