1. How can we ask a bird what it can hear? THE BIRD BOX

2. I study vocal communication in birds, very vocal, stick in flocks.
Try to classify calls based off of behavior or context or acoustic differences. We don’t know how the animals hear and understand these sounds, and if they classify them the same way

3. Needs to be able to output everything to excel from a run
Choice buttons
Camera to monitor bird
Food reward dispenser
Light to be turned off for punishment
Needs to be able to output everything to excel from a run
Date, file/program, bird ID, trial #s, latency to respond, response type, ect…
Lets directly ask the birds. We ask birds about lots of stuff using operant conditioning, where the bird gets rewarded for giving right answers.
The kind of operant conditioning chamber we need has to be able to present auditory information, and measure discrimination, or how well the bird can tell apart or categorize sounds.
It needs the following components
It needs to react to the bird’s choices
Speaker for audio playback
Program that can load audio files and parameters and then run autonomously until trials are complete

4. Thanks!

5. Contact me
Shelby Lawson-