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Sound Localization in Birds

  • Conference paper
Comparative Studies of Hearing in Vertebrates

Part of the book series: Proceedings in Life Sciences ((LIFE SCIENCES))

Abstract

Birds perform a wide variety of acoustically guided behaviors that place a demand on their abilities to localize sound sources in space. Consider, for example, a male song-bird foraging on the forest floor. Should it hear the song of a conspecific male up in the canopy, it will localize the song and fly to the intruder to defend its territory (Weeden and Falls 1959, Falls 1963, Emlen 1971, Krebs 1976). Or consider the barn owl that silently flies over meadows at night in search of food—it hears the rustle of an unsuspecting field mouse, localizes the source, and dives for its prey (Payne and Drury 1958, Payne 1962). Notice that for birds the task of sound localization is complicated by their need to localize accurately in two dimensions: azimuth and elevation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neurobiology, Stanford University School of Medicine, 94305, Stanford, California, USA

    Eric I. Knudsen

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  1. Eric I. Knudsen
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anatomy, Schools of Medicine and Dentistry, Georgetown University, 3900 Reservoir Road, N. W., 20007, Washington, D.C., USA

    Arthur N. Popper

  2. Department of Psychology and Parmly Hearing Institute, Loyola University of Chicago, 6525 North Sheridan Road, 60626, Chicago, Illinois, USA

    Richard R. Fay

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© 1980 Springer-Verlag New York Inc.

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Knudsen, E.I. (1980). Sound Localization in Birds. In: Popper, A.N., Fay, R.R. (eds) Comparative Studies of Hearing in Vertebrates. Proceedings in Life Sciences. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-8074-0_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-8074-0_10

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