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To the point:
• Vocal coordination in duels: Male nightingales rapidly adjust both the pitch and note length of their whistle songs during territorial contests, coordinating these features in real-time as they match rivals' songs.
• Flexible trade-offs: When presented with unusual sound combinations, birds revealed a flexible strategy – sometimes matching note length more closely, sometimes pitch – depending on the specific combination they hear.
• Future directions: Understanding this rapid vocal coordination could inform broader questions about vocal communication across species and how the brain processes complex sounds during interaction.
During conversation, people sometimes synchronize their voices in ways that often go completely unnoticed. Talking speeds converge, sentence lengths shift, turn-taking rhythms fall into sync. New research from the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence and the Institute of Science and Technology Austria has revealed how nightingales also deploy complex vocal coordination when competing for territory and mates in fierce night-time singing duels, coordinating both the pitch and timing of their songs.
Vocal matching – immediately copying sounds just heard – is a rare ability in the animal kingdom that requires rapid processing of what is heard and production of a matching vocal response. Dolphins use it to maintain contact across ocean distances, while parrots employ it to navigate social hierarchies. Nightingales on the other hand use it in territorial contests, producing melodious whistle songs that vary widely in pitch – effectively telling rivals ‘Anything you can sing, I can sing better’. But to match songs precisely requires mimicking challenging factors such as pitch, note length, and their combinations – and with such broad variation in their repertoire, matching everything perfectly at once becomes difficult, making trade-offs necessary.
Recent research showed male nightingales precisely match pitch, but how other features influence song matching remained unclear. The new study adds a crucial temporal dimension by showing that the length of each note also shapes the matching response. The study, published in Current Biology, reveals a complex picture. Rather than simply prioritizing one feature over another, nightingales exhibit a flexible trade-off strategy – adjusting how closely they match pitch versus duration depending on the combination they hear, all within the constraints of their vocal capabilities and happening in real time.
"Nightingales stand out among songbirds for their remarkable vocal flexibility, rapidly adjusting both pitch and timing as males compete for females and territory," explains Juan Sebastián Calderón-García, doctoral researcher and co-lead author from the Institute of Science and Technology Austria. "This vocal matching requires real-time processing and neural flexibility to adjust vocal output in the moment. What we've shown is that they track and imitate both pitch and temporal structure – how long each syllable lasts. Their ability to separate and adjust pitch and duration independently, all in real-time, shows remarkable precision in both hearing and vocal control. This level of precision reveals just how sophisticated the neural coordination must be to juggle multiple sound features simultaneously."
Putting whistles to the test
During previous studies of nightingale song patterns, researchers noticed shifts in syllable duration that hinted note length might matter in vocal matching. Analyzing recordings of nightingales in the wild in Brandenburg, Germany over two breeding seasons, they found natural whistle syllables cluster around three durations: short (under 140 milliseconds), medium (140-310 ms), and long (over 310 ms). They created artificial songs using rarely-used or extreme durations. They showed birds' temporal mimicking followed a clear pattern. When played to territorial males, birds adjusted their whistle length to match – meaning they track both timing and pitch.
The researchers then tested unnatural combinations that were broadcast in these artificial songs: high-pitched whistles with very short or unusually long durations, or low-pitched whistles with unusually long durations. The birds’ responses revealed a flexible strategy – sometimes matching duration more closely, sometimes pitch, depending on the combination. Computational modeling revealed that timing influences pitch matching, explaining the flexible trade-offs.
"Nightingale song provides a window into how the brain coordinates complex vocal behavior on the fly," says Giacomo Costalunga, doctoral researcher and co-lead author from the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence. "Most of what we know about the neural circuits for vocal production comes from species that sing relatively fixed, stereotyped songs. Nightingales on the other hand flexibly adjust in real time to match what they hear across an incredible range of song. Understanding how their neural circuits achieve this rapid coordination opens opportunities to explore broader principles – fundamental constraints that shape vocal communication across species, how animals modify learned vocalizations during social interactions, or even what it really takes for two humans to have meaningful conversations."
Dr. Daniela Vallentin
Research Group Leader
MPI for Biological Intelligence
daniela.vallentin@bi.mpg.de
Interplay between syllable duration and pitch during whistle-matching in wild nightingales
Calderon-Garcia J.S.*, Costalunga G.*, Vogels T.P., Vallentin D.,
* contributed equally to this work
Current Biology, online 12 January 2026
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2025.12.025
https://www.bi.mpg.de/vallentin
Nightingales are known for their remarkable vocal flexibility. During their night-time singing duels ...
Copyright: © MPI for Biological Intelligence / Susanne Seltmann
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