Scientists say song sparrows make and shuffle playlists to attract their mates

Humans have long made playlists to express their love towards a potential partner, and new research suggests song sparrows not only do the same, but can rotate the order.

Male song sparrows, found throughout North America, use their tweets to attract mates. Previous research suggests the sparrows can have up to 12 two-second songs in their repertoire, which they repeat a few times before moving on to the next song.

This "cycle" of songs acts like a playlist and can last for up to 30 minutes. Once it is over, the sparrows will change the order of the songs in the playlist each time it is sung.

What was not previously known is whether or not this re-ordering of the playlist was "by accident or design," according to a Duke University post on the research by Stephen Nowicki, a biologist at the university, which was published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B this week.

In order to collect the data needed to answer this question, Nowicki's research partner William Searcy, an ornithologist and biologist at the University of Miami, hiked into the backwoods of northwest Pennsylvania with equipment to record hours of the birds' songs.