Songbirds have superfast muscles

"We discovered that the European starling (found throughout Eurasia and North-America) and the zebrafinch (found in Australia and Indonesia) control their songs with the fastest-contracting muscle type yet described," says Dr Coen Elemans, at the University of Utah, published today in the journal PLoS One.

"Superfast muscles were previously known only from the sound-producing organs of rattlesnakes, several fish and the ringdove," Dr Elemans says.

"We now have shown that songbirds also evolved this extreme performance muscle type, suggesting these muscles - once thought extraordinary - are more common than previously believed."

While the study examined two species of songbirds, "it is very likely that all songbirds have these muscles," adds Dr Elemans, now at the University of Southern Denmark.

The zebrafinch and European starling can contract and relax their vocal muscles in three to four milliseconds, or three-thousandths to four-thousandths of a second, which is 100 times faster than the 300 milliseconds to 400 milliseconds (three-tenths to four-tenths of a second) it takes us to blink an eye.