These Birds Learned to Tweet Like R2-D2. Listen to the Uncanny Results

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, R2-D2 beeped and booped—and now birds that copy the Star Wars character are giving scientists fresh insight into how different species imitate complex sounds. A study, published recently in Scientific Reports, analyzed the sounds of nine species of parrots, including Budgies, as well as European Starlings to see how accurately each bird mimicked R2-D2’s robotic whirring. Researchers did acoustic analyses on samples of birds imitating the plucky droid that were already available online to compare how statistically similar each bird’s noises were to a model of R2-D2’s sounds.