See? We Told You so.

Some people question our reporting on the Animal Uprising™, saying that animals don't actually know how to communicate with one another. But scientists have now documented that animals - two different bird species in this case - can actually discriminate the information in one another's languages. Told ya.

WASHINGTON - Nuthatches appear to have learned to understand a foreign language — chickadee. It's not unusual for one animal to react to the alarm call of another, but nuthatches seem to go beyond that — interpreting the type of alarm and what sort of predator poses a threat. When a chickadee sees a predator, it issues warning call — a soft "seet" for a flying hawk, owl or falcon, or a loud "chick-a-dee-dee-dee" for a perched predator.

The "chick-a-dee" call can have 10 to 15 "dees" at the end and varies in sound to encode information on the type of predator. It also calls in other small birds to mob the predator, Christopher Templeton of the University of Washington said in a telephone interview.

"In this case the nuthatch is able to discriminate the information in this call," said Templeton, a doctoral candidate.

The findings by Templeton and Erick Green, an associate professor of biological sciences at the University of Montana, are reported in this week's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Now we don't want to alarm anyone, but the scientists are also saying the nuthatches are forming mobs. No, really:

The nuthatches formed into mobs, flicking their wings and swirling around the speakers when the warning was for small predators than for larger ones.

Mobbing is a defensive behavior, Templeton said, when large groups of small birds pester a predator.

"They're not enough to kill you or hurt you, but they are enough to make you want to go and sit somewhere else," he said.

Hah. Says you, Doc. Enough nuthatches can carry you off. We know its true, we saw in on a cartoon once!. But we here at Blue Crab Boulevard wonder if this is why that nice man from the health department keeps calling the Crabitat a "nuthatch". Could it be he recognizes our piuoneering scientifical expertise? Maybe he actually IS a supporter!