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Attenborough: the amazing Lyre Bird sings like a chainsaw! Now in high quality | BBC Earth

BBC Earth2 HN recommenders · 2020–2025
18.5M views · documentary · evergreen · Uploaded 2009-05-18

A short BBC Earth clip from David Attenborough's Life of Birds showing a lyrebird imitating sounds, including a chainsaw and camera shutter, so accurately it is hard to tell from the real thing.

Shared whenever birds mimic sounds come up, as a mind-blowing example of vocal mimicry.

Animals & nature

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5 comments from Hacker News

@NamTaf2020 · in “A ‘viral’ new bird song in Canada is causing sparrows to change their tune”

The Lyrebird from Australia is probably the best at this. It can imitate just about anything - car alarms, other birdsongs, camera shutters, gunshots, etc. etc. [VIDEO] [LINK]

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@Naracion2020 · in “Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attribute”

You might enjoy the superb lyre bird imitating sounds as mind boggling as a chainsaw--and when I say imitate, I mean I couldn't have distinguished the lyre bird sound from a real chainsaw. It's really mind-boggling to me. [VIDEO]

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@olddustytrail2022 · in “Lyrebird – a voice changer for Linux, written in GTK 3”

It's spelled Lyre Bird, not Lire (the spelling is correct in the repo, just wrong in the title). Not much else to say. Here's a lyrebird imitating a chainsaw: [VIDEO]

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@defrost2023 · in “Show HN: Australian Acoustic Observatory Search”

The obvious and very Australian bird question is, of course, how can we search for: * A camera shutter, * A camera with a motorised drive, * A car alarm, * A chainsaw, ... etc ? [VIDEO]

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@MrMcCall2025 · in “Why do some birds mimic the sounds of other species?”

Here's the one that blows my mind: [VIDEO] It's from one of (our honorary Uncle) David Attenborough's nature series, where a Lyre bird is imitating an analog professional camera, a car alarm, and a chainsaw. If I hadn't watched it well over a decade ago, I don't think I'd believe it. Search YT for 'lyre bird imitating chainsaw' for a choice of vids.

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