Fable the Raven | How do Ravens speak like humans?

[Music] what else would you like to say what [Music] can i have a kiss [Music] hi guys and welcome back to the channel today i wanted to discuss something which i've been meaning to for a little while and that's all about how ravens make their noises i commonly get asked about whether fables noises are real as if i spend a lot of time editing them um into videos which i definitely don't have time to be doing stuff like that people just don't understand how corvids and parrots can make such an amazing range of noises like fable here there are loads of different calls that ravens make in the wild and that applies to our captive bred ravens as well in fact scientists have placed wild raven vocalizations into as many as 33 different categories based on the context and the sound so their natural range is absolutely huge of course the most common noise that we hear from a raven is the croak or the cronk because of that low throaty noise it makes which is much more melodic and deep than the typical crow core that we hear and in fact wild ravens can hear that cronk from over a mile away and you'll often find that when one raven cronks another one will cronk over in their location in fact here where i live we have loads of ravens knocking about we regularly see up to 15 together which are probably young ravens that haven't paired up yet and you often hear one cronking on one side of the valley and you'll often hear a response as well so it's very common to hear these vocalizations and of course when i hear it i have to have a look around and see what i can see among their other calls when they see predators in particular or people or animals that they see as a threat they'll make quite a shrill sharp repetitive noise warding those people or those threats away from their nest or their territory where they live they also have deep rasping calls when their nests get disturbed and they're quite specific calls that when you hear them you should know that it's a raven that's making them either way they're very territorial crawls that they're trying to say get away from my nest get away from my space not wah like fable and it's a way for them to express their feelings of anger as they're trying to protect usually their nest [Music] [Music] hi hi you're showing off tonight you want to get very very close today and she's just in a really jolly mood tonight aren't you lovie now a lot of people ask me why i think fables are female um and there are a few different reasons why a lot of it's down to size and weight but also with her it's due to a particular sound that she makes now we know that commonly dominant female ravens hi will make a sort of repetitive knocking or rattling sound sounds a lot like a dinosaur how we think a dinosaur would sound uh and fablem does make that quite a lot not so much now but when she was a bit younger particularly and that's a sound that in the wild we know only really dominant female ravens make now beyond the normal calls that we would hear a raven make of course depending on their surrounding they're going to make sounds that they're exposed to so for particularly for captive bred birds or birds that are kept in captivity they're going to have much more of a chance of learning human words which of course fable loves her highs and hellos hi hi there we go um so of course captive bred birds are going to potentially learn a much larger range of human words or sound because they've got more chance to mimic those noises because they're closer to people wild ravens are much more wily and they don't naturally want to be around people in the same way that these guys do and so they're not going to really learn those same sort of sounds [Music] you might be wondering how birds like fable make these sounds now it's hard to see what's going on because we have lips and that helps us to form our words um but ravens don't have lips they just have a beak that goes open and closed are you coming over now they have something called a syrinx so we have something called a larynx but below their larynx they have something called a syrinx and the syrinx is basically a very special organ that is unique to birds so it's the syrinx that is responsible for the bird's incredible range it allows them to make two sounds at once and to be able to sing continuously without getting a sore throat amazingly the oldest syrinx has actually been found in a bird fossil that's over 67 million years old the amazing thing about the syringe is that it's extremely efficient it uses nearly all the air that passes through it whereas in contrast a human only uses two percent of the air that passes through the larynx so there's a huge difference in the way that these organs work i must admit i've been truly amazed since i've had fable in the development of all the different noises she's made when she was a baby she just made one raven squawk for food which is really common it's something that all ravens would make it's nothing special but because i consistently talked at her and repeated words she obviously realized that we were exchanging a language and it meant that she started to pick up on those favorite words now why she picked up certain words i don't know but funnily enough one of the things that she first learned was hello now i don't think it's so much that she understands the meaning of hello although we certainly use it as a greeting and she'll always call from her avery to me using hello but that's because that's the first thing that i tend to say to her when i walk over to her and go and see her so it is a greeting of sorts and i guess she might have some recognition on a very basic level but we've sort of formed our own language as a pair where we have things that we both say to each other come on you and we can sort of understand what words we like to say or what noises in the same way that wild corvettes will form certain sounds and understanding for what those things mean fable's done the same with me so she has noises she makes when she's feeling frustrated because i'm not letting her do something that she wants to do which is usually stealing my phone or hi or getting into something that she shouldn't be and then she has noises that she makes when she's happy like her purring when she's very very content and then she has lots of other sounds which are really just social sort of talking where she basically wants to have a chat with me and come on you and she's just wanting attention you can see she's acting up at the minute because i'm not paying attention to her so she's busy trying to crawl around on my head and make as much of a faff as possible until i give her some attention hello what would you like hi hi the thing i find most fascinating is the clarity you get from corvids especially ravens they really do seem to mimic in a whole new level i can forgive people for thinking it's a recording that they make because actually it is so clear and often it does catch people out especially people come to visit here and they often wonder what they can hear they think i'm hiding around corners and actually it's just fable shouting at them from wherever she is and generally confusing them with all of her vocabulary because she sounds like me and that's because she spends time with me she occasionally sounds like other people where she's picked up things um but largely her accent is my accent but i think it's safe to say that ravens and other corvids as well as parrots often enjoy sounds that they learn and they will pick things up for fun and i've seen it in paris as well as in corvids so although some things have meaning in terms of communication and probably have quite a lot of significance there are some noises she makes which really are just sociable they're fun and i think there's a big part of corvids where they really do just like to be total clowns and mess around and it's something that really attracts me to these birds because they really do have a mind of their own um and you know they are super fascinating to work with so i hope that's answered a few of your questions about how fable can talk hi and why she makes the noises she makes as well as learning a little bit about wild raven language as well but hopefully that helps you to understand a little bit about what they do as always thank you so much for watching and i'll see you all very soon [Music] you

Channel: Falconry And Me

Views: 662,638

Keywords: avian training, bird training, about birds, intellegent birds, fable the raven, boop boop, raven, raven training, ravens, talking raven, talking birds, fable

Id: bXZHHzSiBqc

Length: 10min 24sec (624 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 13 2021