Before birth, babies can tell the difference between loud sounds and voices. They can even distinguish their mother's voice from that of a female stranger. But when it comes to embryonic learning, birds could rule the roost. As recently reported in The Auk: Ornithological Advances, some mother birds may teach their young to sing even before they hatch. New-born chicks can then imitate their mom's call within a few days of entering the world．
婴儿在出生前可以区分大声和小声，他们甚至可以区分妈妈的声音和陌生女性的声音。但说到胚胎学习， 鸟类则首屈一指。正如《Auk：鸟类学进展》杂志最近报道的那样，一些鸟妈妈甚至在幼鸟孵化之前就可以教它们唱歌。新生的小鸡可以在出生后的几天内模仿妈妈的叫声。
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This educational method was first z observed in 2012 by Sonia Kleindorfer, a biologist at Flinders University in South Australia, and her colleagues. Female Australian superb fairy wrens were found to repeat one sound over and over again while hatching their eggs, when the eggs were hatched, the baby birds made the similar chirp to their mothers-a sound that served as their regular "feed me!" call.
2012年，南澳大利亚弗林德斯大学的生物学家Sonia Kleindorfer和她的同事首次观察到了这种教育方法。人们发现，澳大利亚雌性壮丽细尾鹩莺在孵蛋时会一遍又一遍地重复一个声音，当蛋孵化出来时，幼鸟会发出与妈妈相似的常规鸣叫：“喂我！”。
To find out if the special quality was more widespread in birds, the researchers sought the red-backed fairy wren, another species of Australian songbird. First they collected sound data from 67 nests in four sites in Queensland before and after hatching. Then they identified begging calls by analyzing the order and number of notes. A computer analysis blindly compared calls produced by mothers and chicks, ranking them by similarity.
为了查明这种特质是否在鸟类中更为普遍，研究人员寻找了另一种澳大利亚鸣禽红背细尾鹩莺。首先，他们从昆士兰四个地点的67个巢穴中收集了孵化前后的声音数据。然后，他们通过分析音符的顺序和数量来识别乞食的叫声。一项计算机分析盲目地比较了母鸡和小鸡发出的叫声，并根据相似性对它们进行了排名。
It turns out that baby red-backed fairy wrens also emerge chirping like their moms. And the more frequently mothers had called to their eggs, the more similar were the babies' begging calls. In addition, the team set up a separate experiment that suggested that the baby birds that most closely imitated their mom's voice were rewarded with the most food.
事实证明，红背细尾鹩莺幼鸟也会像它们的妈妈一样鸣叫。妈妈对蛋的叫声越频繁，幼鸟的乞食叫声就越相似。此外，该团队还进行了一项独立的实验，表明最能模仿妈妈声音的幼鸟会得到最多的食物。
This observation hints that effective embryonic learning could signal neurological strengths of children to parents. An evolutionary inference can then be drawn." As a parent, do you invest in quality children, or do you invest in children that are in need?" Kleindorfer asks. " Our results suggest that they might be going for quality."
这一观察结果表明，有效的胚胎学习可以向父母传达孩子的神经力量，然后可以得出进化推断。“作为父母，你是投资于高质量的孩子，还是投资于有需要的孩子？”Kleindorfer问道，“我们的研究结果表明，他们可能会追求高质量。”
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