Some songbirds have superfast muscles

SALT LAKE CITY, July 9 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists say they've determined some songbirds can contract their vocal muscles 100 times faster than humans can blink an eye.

That finding places such birds with a handful of animals that have evolved superfast muscles, University of Utah researchers said.

"We discovered that the European starling (found throughout Eurasia and North-America) and the zebra finch (found in Australia and Indonesia) control their songs with the fastest-contracting muscle type yet described," said Coen Elemans, who conducted the study as a postdoctoral researcher in biology.

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

He said while the new study examined two species of songbirds, "it is very likely that all songbirds have these muscles."

The study that included University of Utah Associate Professor Franz Goller, as well as University of Pennsylvania doctoral student Andrew Mead and Professor Lawrence Rome, appears in the online journal PLoS One.