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Click here Birds have learnt to imitate the ring tones of the omnipresent mobile pho nes, say German ornithologists. "The birds have an uncanny ability to mimic these ring tones. This has pi cked up in tandem with the boom in mobile phone ownership," Richard Schn eider of the NABU bird conservation centre near the university city of T uebingen here said. Jackdaws, starlings and jays were the best mimics, Schneider said adding that even practiced birdwatchers were being fooled by the birds. One reason for the phenomenon was that these birds were increasingly comm on in the urban environment, even the relatively shy jay, he said. "Ther e is food and an increasing amount of green space in modern cities." The birds were simply adapting to their environment in imitating human so unds in what he termed an "evolutionary playground". Many of the more common ring tones are themselves imitations of bird call s, so the birds are in some instances mimicking another species. "Many birds call not only to find mates or to mark out their territory, b ut sometimes also to fool other animals," Schneider said. However, they never lose the ability to make the calls typical of their species, he ad ded. Mobile phone users who have ring tones from pop music will, however, not find themselves reaching for their phones in error when a bird calls. Th e birds cannot imitate these complex melodies, only the simpler ring ton es.
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