HackerTube.dev

Amazing! Bird Sounds From The Lyre Bird - David Attenborough - BBC Wildlife

BBC Studios · 22.7M views · 2007-02-12 · 2:55

Open on YouTube ↗

If playback is restricted in your region, try opening the original video. Use Mark watched to add it to your marked videos.

Overview

A short BBC clip in which David Attenborough shows a lyrebird imitating sounds, including camera shutters, car alarms and chainsaws. It comes from the BBC natural history series Life on Earth.

On Hacker News

Brought up whenever threads touch on mimicry, voice cloning or bird vocalization, and people say the ending is startling.

Recommended by 2 HN people across 2 months · HN mentions 2008–2023

Topics

Search by tags

What people said

coldsmoke · 2017-04 · Strong recommendation

I guess they've named it that because the lyrebird is an amazing impersonator. The end of this BBC clip blew my mind the first time I saw it. [VIDEO] But you may have a point, and the ethics section makes it clear that they are indeed very aware of that this may be misused.

Read the original HN comment ↗
paloaltokid · 2016-08 · Strong recommendation

Another amazing bird worth knowing about is the Lyrebird: [VIDEO] It copies not just the songs of other birds, but man-made sounds as well! Check out the link, it's mindblowing.

Read the original HN comment ↗
kristopolous · 2023-07 · Reference

Correct. You can't use a single number to accurately measure something that takes more than a single number to express. It's reductionist and impossible. All kinds of animals are far better then us at specific core brain functions with way smaller brains. Mantis shrimps are way better at vision than we are and lyre birds are way better at vocalization. ( [VIDEO] ) You can find all kinds of vastly superior aspects of systems in the animal world. Ants and bees for instance, are probably better at socializing. Some supercolonies span thousands of miles with hundreds of millions of ants - rivaling the size of human countries. Ants, 0.25mg brains. Doesn't seem that important in organizing either. We're certainly not 5.2 million times better (which is our difference in brain mass) We're the only animals that have built rocketships and computers - so there's certainly something there but it's fleeting and complicated. Reducing it to a single measurement is inherently inaccurate in the same way you cannot describe the material, color, shape and volume of 3 dimensional objects with 1 number. Brain size alone cannot be a complete or useful metric.

Read the original HN comment ↗

Sources

Video by BBC Studios, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

HN summaries and labels may contain AI errors. HN dates refer to discussions, not video publication.

HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

Views, duration and playback status refresh separately from the published catalog. When an update fails, existing data remains visible.

Selection checks
  • SaaS & AI candidates: Topic keywords do not match
  • Editor-approved picks: Editorial review is required

Rule matches identify candidates. They do not guarantee video quality or financial results.

About the library and its sources