Is nothing sacred?

Those damn animals. Every time you turn around they're encroaching on our domain. And scientists will insist on helping them.

Now it's grammar. A psychologist at the University of California has taught starlings to differentiate between a regular bird song "sentence" and one that has warbling or rattling phrases inserted in it. This, apparently, is comparable to recognizing a sentence that contains an explanatory clause, an intellectual feat linguists thought only humans could accomplish. But nine out of the 11 birds involved in the study learned to do it. The other two flunked out.

A professor of cognitive science at the university said the study indicated there is no "single magic bullet" separating us from the rest of the animal kingdom. What's next -- crows writing poetry? One wonders what Noam Chomsky thinks of all this.