FEMALE BIRDS CAN ALSO SING

1990s

For many centuries, naturalists believed that only male birds can sing. After all, it is the male that has to attract the female, right? It was not until the 1990s that it was discovered that in many tropical species the female birds can also sing. Not only that, more than 64 percent of songbird species have singing females, including common and well-studied birds like the Barn Swallow. So why did generations of scientists fail to observe this?

Until recently, it was mostly Western men that studied birds. Men that predominantly studied the birds of North America and Europe. The male researchers had simply assumed that female birds do not sing or were not interested in singing females. When more women started getting into bird song research and studied tropical birds they discovered that female birds also sing.

These scientific “blind spots” can be prevented by having better epistemic diversity. This means including people with different skills, knowledge and views in academic communities, this diversity helps filter out errors and ask a wider range of research questions.

Additional info:

The Conversation - Women have disrupted research on bird song, and their findings show how diversity can improve all fields of science

Scientific American - Female Birds Sing, Too

The Routledge Handbook of Social Epistemology - The Epistemic Significance of Diversity