Science & technologyThe origin of songbirdsThe sweet taste of successSongbirds can detect sugar. That may explain their ubiquityImagine a world without bird song.Yet this might have come about if it had not been for a genetic change that happened some 30m years ago, at the beginning of the evolution of the Passeri, to give songbirds their proper name.Birds evolved from carnivorous dinosaurs called theropods.Meat eaters need not detect sugar in the way that, say, fruit eaters do, and genetic analyses of modern birds suggest their theropod ancestor had lost the ability to taste sweetness.Today, however, many birds have sugar-rich diets of nectar or fruit, so perceiving things as sweet is a useful attribute.And research just published in Science by Toda Yasuka of Tokyo University and Maude Baldwin of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen, Germany, suggests songbirds can indeed perceive sweetness.This reevolved ability may have been instrumental in their success. Since almost half the bird species now alive are Passeri, that is no small matter.
