Female fairy wrens teach bird embryos a special note in order to get food. They can also pass on bird memes to their young.
In an interesting example of prenatal learning, a species of tiny Australian songbirds teach their embryonic young a special password, which the baby birds must chirp in order to get food after they’re born. The password is a single unique note the mother wren teaches them from outside the egg, according to biologists.
They adopt such measures to prevent feeding babies of some other bird. Cuckoos and other brood parasitic birds lay their eggs in another bird’s nest, pawning off parenting onto an unsuspecting mother. Hence the baby cuckoo is raised by some other parent. Recognizing a special password would prevent this–or at least prevent the wren from doing all the hard work of parenting someone else’s offspring.
Sonia Kleindorfer of Flinders University noticed it when they saw some awkward changes during bird call studies.  They noticed fairy wren were calling to their unhatched eggs, and they heard that wren nestling’s begging calls were different from one nest to another. They eventually realized the unique element in each mother’s incubation call, which you can hear here, was the basis of her hatchling’s begging call.
Kleindorfer said in a statement this shows that mothers can pass on more than just genes–they can pass on memes!
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