This is scientific American's 60 second science.

I'm Drudana Sepelloitz.

Got a minute?

Humans have always considered themselves special compared with other animals.

One reason is the complexity of our language, bounded by unique rules such

as syntax where we string words together in a specific order to create meaningful sentences.

But it turns out a bird may also vocalize with syntax rules.

The Japanese Great Tet, a bird that's a close relative of North America's very own

chickadee.

Toshi Taka Suzuki of Japan's graduate university for advanced studies has been listening to the calls of the Japanese great tit for the past decade.

Suzuki has recorded at least 10 alarm calls used by the bird. These include

known as the ABC call which alerts alerts other great tit to the presence of a predator,

and the D call, which signals the birds to approach the collar.

Now Suzuki and his colleagues have found that the great tit uses those calls

together to deliver both messages to other birds

and they found that the order of that call was essential.

Only,

A, B, C, D, made sense to the birds.

When the scientists intentionally reversed the order to create a D-AB-C call,

the birds did not respond.

The study is in the journal Nature Communications.

I think the really interesting thing is why the order matters and figuring out out I think will be difficult but also potentially really, really interesting because it will give a lot of insight.

...