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Magpies: secrets of a complex society revealed

November 11, 2004

The author of a new book on Australian magpies has gone further than anyone before her in understanding the “language” of these intelligent birds.

Gisela Kaplan’s research has overturned some long-held assumptions about magpie songs and calls, and has enabled her to enter the “magpie world”: a world of complex social interaction and communication. Her book, Australian Magpie: Biology and Behaviour of an Unusual Songbird (CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne, 2004), is the result of 10 years’ immersion in that world.

There she found a social structure resembling that of the great apes, with a “vertical” dimension of dominant/subordinate individuals as well as a “horizontal” dimension of rivalry and cooperation. “Such social complexity requires a corresponding complexity in communication,” said Professor Kaplan, who lectures in Biological Sciences and Education at the University of New England.

Australian Magpie is the first comprehensive book ever published on this iconic Australian songster. It covers everything from the anatomy and evolution of magpies (tracing their history back to the origin of the songbirds in the great southern continent of Gondwanaland) to their relationships with people. These relationships involve the real bonds of affection and communication that can develop between magpies and their human neighbours, and the complex cognitive processes that underlie magpies’ selection of human intruders as targets for “swooping”.

Thousands of hours of patient observation have given Professor Kaplan the insights that she shares with the reader of her book. “Did you know, for example, that they only start mating when they’re five years old?” she asked. “And that only a small proportion of magpies reproduce, while the others act as helpers?”

The book contains new information on magpie anatomy, physiology, development, health, social life and communication. Her groundbreaking work on vocal communication has revealed that alarm calls can refer to specific sources of danger, that individual magpies may have a specific “signature” that they append to song syllables, that carolling can serve a range of purposes (including different songs for different stages of seeking and finding a source of food), and that males and females have largely separate repertoires (the female repertoire being the larger).

Songbirds, like humans but unlike most other mammals, have to learn their vocal communication sounds. Professor Kaplan’s work comes at a time when neuroscientists are using the bird brain (and particularly its “song centres”, which undergo seasonal changes) as a model for the possibility of neural regeneration in the human brain.

Gisela Kaplan is the author of many books and scientific papers on animal behaviour, including (in collaboration with her UNE colleague Professor Lesley Rogers) Birds: Their Habits and Skills (Allen & Unwin, 2001). Earlier this year she received an Australian Award for Excellence in Publishing for her children’s book Famous Australian Birds (Allen & Unwin, 2003).


Media contact: Professor Gisela Kaplan on (02) 6775 3113 or Jim Scanlan (UNE Public Relations) on (02) 6773 3049.
For a photograph of Professor Kaplan, please contact Jim Scanlan on (02) 6773 3049.

Posted by Jim Scanlan at November 11, 2004 04:39 PM