There are more than 5,000 species of songbirds. Neuroscientist Sarah Woolley can identify the nine species she studies just by listening to their song.
Woolley examines the brains and behaviors of songbirds. Her lab at Columbia University in New York City investigates how songbirds learn to sing and use songs to communicate. Her research can help us understand how humans learn languages. Woolley discovered her love of songbirds in college, and she has studied their songs ever since.
HOW DID YOU BECOME INTERESTED IN SONGBIRDS?
I was an undergraduate student in college, and I was working in a lab that studied the development of motor behavior, or movements. I took a poster [a visual presentation researchers put together to summarize their work] to the Society for Neuroscience meeting, which
