These birds have been singing the same songs for literally a million years

A sunbird is a tiny bird that resembles a hummingbird. The image was taken by Jay Hendry.

The mountains of East Africa may have been the same as a million years ago. A new study shows that a group of tiny birds have been singing the same tunes for more than half a million years.

Sunbirds are common throughout Africa and Asia and are colorful, tiny, and hummingbird-like. They are the little jewels that appear before you, according to senior author Rauri Bowie, a professor of biology at the University of California, Berkeley.
The eastern double-collared sunbird is known as the "sky island sunbird" because it lives at the peaks of tall mountains in East Africa. For tens of thousands to a million years, these peaks isolated different populations of this species from one another. Many populations of sky island sunbirds are indistinguishable from each other.

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They wondered if the birds' songs had remained the same. In order to answer the question, the researchers visited 15 sky islands in East Africa between 2007 and 2011. The sunbirds' songs were analyzed using a statistical technique.

Some of the isolated populations still sing the same songs. That suggests that the songs haven't evolved much in the thousands of years that the different lineages have been separated. The researchers found that the two populations of species that had been separated the longest had nearly identical songs, whereas two other populations that were separated for a shorter time had very different songs.
The team's findings were surprising, as biologists typically expect bird songs to evolve and change over time in different populations. Birds in the Northern Hemisphere have changed a number of times over tens of thousands of years, so the idea that bird songs rapidly evolve came from studying them. Birds have evolved new colors, songs and behaviors to better adapt to new environments, such as the presence or absence of glaciers.

The mountains of East Africa have not seen much geological change, suggesting that the sunbirds had no reason to change their appearance. According to the statement and accompanying video, the researchers concluded that birds and their songs can stay the same for millions of years if environmental shifts cause them to evolve quickly or in a pulse.

If you isolated humans, their dialects often changed, and you can tell where they come from after a while. "And song has been interpreted in that way as well," he said. The paper shows that it's not the case for birds. You can have long periods of stasis even in traits that are labile.

Scientists in East Africa are trying to figure out why some birds don't sing newer songs.
The findings were published in a journal.

Live Science published the original article.