This odd commonality between kids and birds could be a major neuroscience breakthrough.
Eating food off the ground, pooping with abandon, and language acquisition — three things kids and birds have in common.
You, like most humans, were born — and about a year later, you learned to talk.
A uniquely human story, right? Not so fast.
It turns out, when it comes to language learning, songbirds are a lot like humans.
A new study conducted by researchers at the University of California, San Diego, suggests humans and songbirds both rely on patterns to categorize sounds into words.
The birds are already tweeting this story like crazy. Images by Thinkstock.
When human children acquire a language, they learn sounds and words at the same time.
These sounds work together to create patterns. These complex patterns are categorized as words.
When a child greets their mother for the first time, it might sound like they're just saying the individual "ma" sound twice in a row, but they're actually deliberately saying "mama" as a complex pattern, which forms a word that means something specific.
It may seem silly, but the difference is significant.
This sweet little guy is hiding out before the birds arrive. Image by Thinkstock.
Like humans, European starlings, a common songbird, use complex patterns to communicate.
Their "words" are made up of warbles, rattles, whistles, and other high-pitched tones — like children.
Baths now. Equal footing with humans later. Image by Thinkstock.
The researches wanted to see if pattern recognition influenced the ability of European starlings to categorize sounds.
In the study, two groups of starlings had to categorize a string of complex sounds.
The starlings in the first group heard the sounds in a specific order, while the starlings in the second group did not.
And boom. Without the sounds in a specific order, it was much harder for the second group of starlings to categorize what they heard.
Cooooool. So what does it all mean?
It means that the starlings rely on pattern much like humans do.
Be kind to our new bird overlords. Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images.
This odd biological coincidence could be a breakthrough for neuroscientists.
While starlings don't use words, they can provide insight into the cognitive processes that make language learning possible.
Research and advancements like this shed some light on the brain, a wildly complex organ that we know very little about. There's still a lot of of work to be done in this field.
For now though, keep an eye (and ear) on the sky.
A chattering of starlings, no doubt discussing the avian uprising. Photo by Filippo Monteforte/AFP/Getty Images.
A Generation Jones teenager poses in her room.Image via Wikmedia Commons
An office kitchen.via 
An angry man eating spaghetti.via 
An Irish woman went to the doctor for a routine eye exam. She left with bright neon green eyes.
It's not easy seeing green.
Did she get superpowers?
Going to the eye doctor can be a hassle and a pain. It's not just the routine issues and inconveniences that come along when making a doctor appointment, but sometimes the various devices being used to check your eyes' health feel invasive and uncomfortable. But at least at the end of the appointment, most of us don't look like we're turning into The Incredible Hulk. That wasn't the case for one Irish woman.
Photographer Margerita B. Wargola was just going in for a routine eye exam at the hospital but ended up leaving with her eyes a shocking, bright neon green.
At the doctor's office, the nurse practitioner was prepping Wargola for a test with a machine that Wargola had experienced before. Before the test started, Wargola presumed the nurse had dropped some saline into her eyes, as they were feeling dry. After she blinked, everything went yellow.
Wargola and the nurse initially panicked. Neither knew what was going on as Wargola suddenly had yellow vision and radioactive-looking green eyes. After the initial shock, both realized the issue: the nurse forgot to ask Wargola to remove her contact lenses before putting contrast drops in her eyes for the exam. Wargola and the nurse quickly removed the lenses from her eyes and washed them thoroughly with saline. Fortunately, Wargola's eyes were unharmed. Unfortunately, her contacts were permanently stained and she didn't bring a spare pair.
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Since she has poor vision, Wargola was forced to drive herself home after the eye exam wearing the neon-green contact lenses that make her look like a member of the Green Lantern Corps. She couldn't help but laugh at her predicament and recorded a video explaining it all on social media. Since then, her video has sparked a couple Reddit threads and collected a bunch of comments on Instagram:
“But the REAL question is: do you now have X-Ray vision?”
“You can just say you're a superhero.”
“I would make a few stops on the way home just to freak some people out!”
“I would have lived it up! Grab a coffee, do grocery shopping, walk around a shopping center.”
“This one would pair well with that girl who ate something with turmeric with her invisalign on and walked around Paris smiling at people with seemingly BRIGHT YELLOW TEETH.”
“I would save those for fancy special occasions! WOW!”
“Every time I'd stop I'd turn slowly and stare at the person in the car next to me.”
“Keep them. Tell people what to do. They’ll do your bidding.”
In a follow-up Instagram video, Wargola showed her followers that she was safe at home with normal eyes, showing that the damaged contact lenses were so stained that they turned the saline solution in her contacts case into a bright Gatorade yellow. She wasn't mad at the nurse and, in fact, plans on keeping the lenses to wear on St. Patrick's Day or some other special occasion.
While no harm was done and a good laugh was had, it's still best for doctors, nurses, and patients alike to double-check and ask or tell if contact lenses are being worn before each eye test. If not, there might be more than ultra-green eyes to worry about.