I say that a white-crowned sparrow sings a distinctive dialect because its genes influenced how its song system was assembled, which in turn made dialect learning possible. You say that it sings the song because of the operation of the robust nucleus of the arcopallium, which sends signals to the bird's vocal control apparatus, the syrinx. Who is correct?
A) I am wrong because learning is environmentally determined, not determined by the bird's genes. B) You are wrong because the bird's vocal apparatus is called the larynx, not the syrinx. C) We both may be right because our two hypotheses offer two different proximate levels of analysis of dialect singing. D) We both may be right because our two hypotheses offer two complementary levels of analysis, one proximate and the other ultimate.
Research results showed that in zebra finches, the sonograms of the songs of a father and his sons reveal a close match unless a son has been deafened early in life. These results best support which hypothesis?
A) The genetic differences hypothesis B) The acoustic stimulus hypothesis C) The environmental adaptation hypothesis D) The recognition hypothesis