Songbirds have superfast muscles

By Roger Highfield, Science Editor The Starling can contract its vocal muscles 100 times faster than humans can blink an eye - placing the birds among an elite animals with "superfast" muscles. "We discovered that the European starling (found throughout Eurasia and North-America) and the zebrafinch (found in Australia and Indonesia) control their songs with the fastest-contracting muscle type yet described," says Dr Coen Elemans, at the University of Utah, published today in the journal PLoS One. A starling's vocal muscles move 100 times faster than a human can blink "Superfast muscles were previously known only from the sound-producing organs of rattlesnakes, several fish and the ringdove," Dr Elemans says. "We now have shown that songbirds also evolved this extreme performance muscle type, suggesting these muscles - once... [read full story]