Songbirds develop super muscles for dawn chorus

By Steve Connor, Science Editor Mozart is said to have been inspired by the repertoire of musical notes produced by his pet starling. Now scientists can explain how the songbird is able to control such a varied voice. A study has found that the vocal muscles of an European starling can contract a hundred times faster than the blink of a human eye, which is why the bird can handle so many sound modulations with such speed and precision. "We discovered that the European starling – found throughout Eurasia and North America – and the zebra finch found in Australia and Indonesia, control their songs with the fastest-contracting muscle type yet described," said Coen Elemans, a biologist at the University of Utah. "Superfast muscles were previously known only from the sound-producing organs of rattlesnakes, several fish and a dove.... [read full story]