The impact that wiped out the dinosaurs also wiped out all songbirds, except for in (ark) Australia. Australian songbirds then spread out to rest of the planet.

The closest living descendents (aka basal lineages) are the Lyrebird and the Rufus scrub bird. The lyrebird's song is a mixture of its own song and other birds songs. They have been also been known to mimic chainsaws, car alarms, camera shutters, and human speech.

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[–] 13 points 9 months ago (6 children)

To be fair, all birds who went extinct back then also still had a common ancestor somewhere, all life on earth does.

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  • [–] 9 points 9 months ago (5 children)

    There's plenty of convergent evolution. Plants keep evolving into trees, so there isn't a single origin for them. Crustaceans keep evolving into crabs.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (2 children)

    There’s a single origin for everything. It doesn’t matter how many times the descendants of that common ancestor have diverged and reconverged.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (1 child)
    1. You're talking about a different subject than me.
    2. There's no consensus for what you're saying.

    1: You're talking about whether a common ancestor exists for all life, I'm talking about common ancestor for a trait (e.g. tree bark, bird song, these are traits and not organisms).

    2: There's current debate on whether life emerged multiple times or if it was only once. There's evidence for both and it's not a settled debate.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago
    1. If that’s so, then that’s not what you said. You said “plants keep evolving into trees”. While it’s true that we give the name “trees” to a variety of plants with different genetics, all of them share a common ancestor: otherwise they wouldn’t be plants but something else.
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  • [–] 7 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    So, what about Australia made all the birds sing?

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago (5 children)

    Imagine a 10' tall lyrebird roaming free thru the streets....honking, pretending to be a camera, an ambulance, a fire truck.

    At night it keeps repeating parts of the news...."and the president will invade Eur! And the p..."

    My best guess is that's why we don't see any of those things these days. Someone or something got pissed.

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  • [+] 1 point 9 months ago (4 children)
  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (3 children)

    Song birds must have been much larger in prehistoric times I assume. Maybe not 11' tall but what about the size of a crow or a dog? Imagine chirping so loud you can still hear it if you close your doors.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    Australia has song birds about the size of a crow, they're called Magpies. They are at times aggressively territorial, extremely intelligent, family orientated and very pleasant to wake up to in the morning.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago

    Thought the thumbnail said Song Bogan.

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  • [–] -4 points 9 months ago

    That's nice and all for a science or bird community. Not here, though.

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