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Hi, I'm Neil, the host of the Good News podcast.

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This is your source for good news, fun stories and Sonic Joy.

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All of this goodness is coming to you from beautiful Chicago, Illinois.

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Today's good news comes to us out of the University of Tokyo in Japan where a bird researcher has made a very cool discovery about bird communication in the past.

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On the good news podcast, we've shared plenty of good news about birds.

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Their calls can help us relax.

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And one researcher, Toshitaka Suzuki along with a team of researchers has been focused on one particular bird, the Japanese tit, this bird is already an overachiever because there is evidence that it uses complex syntax in its bird calls, which I take to mean that they are using like sentences with bird calls, which is super cool.

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More recently, the same researcher has found that these birds are using nonverbal symbolic gestures.

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So you're asking yourself, what does that mean?

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Well, in this context, it's things like a thumbs up for great job or waving goodbye.

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Those are symbolic gestures.

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And for a long time, it was believed that only humans and great apes used these kinds of gestures.

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And I know I've got a lot of pup fans out there who are saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, what about pupperinos?

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Apparently another kind of nonverbal gesturing is deictic which is like pointing something out non verbally back to the Japanese tit which has been shown to flutter its wings as an after you gesture to its mated bird.

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Researchers noted that when two birds were outside of a nesting bird box, one bird, usually the female bird would flutter its wings, then its mate would go into the box and then the other bird would follow it in.

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Researchers went to great lengths to ensure that this wasn't random or one of those deictic gestures, they weren't fluttering at the nest box, they were fluttering at each other and they reviewed more than 320 nest meetups like this and they're pretty confident that when one bird flutters its wings at the other outside of its nest, that means you go ahead and to me that is absolutely amazing nature apparently always has new and wonderful things for us to discover.

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And I think it's pretty neat anytime we have some skill or talent that we think is uniquely human.

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But then we find different variations and versions of it in other flora and fauna on the planet, not to get too sappy, but it just feels like all of us animals are still pretty closely related.

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That's the good news I have for you today.

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Enjoy the rest of your day.

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The music you hear on the show is from Paddington Bear.

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Have a great day.