This is bird note.

For birds, learning starts early.

Birds listen to their parents' songs and calls from inside the egg. Recent findings have

shown that calls from Zebra Finch parents can even prepare their chicks for

warmer temperatures

before they hatch.

Researchers noticed that Zebra finches

make a special high-pitched call,

called a heat call,

when sitting on their eggs

and temperatures rise above 84 degrees.

After chicks inside the egg have heard a apparent making these heat calls,

it has a profound effect on them, down to the cellular level.

They metabolize energy differently,

perhaps to reduce the amount of damage to their bodies caused by heat.

Once out of the egg, these chicks grow more slowly in the heat.

As adults, they seek out warmer spots for their nests and even produce more offspring

of their own than finches that didn't slow their growth in hot conditions when they were chicks. Scientists are still figuring out how exactly this sound signal from the parents

ends up changing their offspring's development.

But what's encouraging is that at least for this species,

parents have a way of getting their young ones

ready to survive in a warming world. For Bird Note, I'm Ariana Rimmel.

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