2017 年高考江苏卷 —— 胎教 Embryonic Learning

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.

This educational method was first 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.

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.