THE VIDEO SHELF · bird mimicry
Attenborough: the amazing Lyre Bird sings like a chainsaw! Now in high quality | BBC Earth
A short BBC Earth clip from David Attenborough's Life of Birds showing a lyrebird imitating sounds, including a chainsaw and camera shutter, so accurately it is hard to tell from the real thing.
Why HN readers recommended it
Shared whenever birds mimic sounds come up, as a mind-blowing example of vocal mimicry.
This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.
Video & recommendation details
- Creator / channel
- BBC Earth
- Topic
- bird mimicry
- Format
- documentary
- Level
- general
- HN recommenders in dataset
- 2
- HN mentions in dataset
- 5
- Recommendation years in dataset
- 2020–2025
These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.
From the original HN conversations
Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.
You might enjoy the superb lyre bird imitating sounds as mind boggling as a chainsaw--and when I say imitate, I mean I couldn't have distinguished the lyre bird sound from a real chainsaw. It's really mind-boggling to me. [VIDEO]
Naracion on Hacker News · 2020-09
In Crows possess higher intelligence long thought a primarily human attributeHere's the one that blows my mind: [VIDEO] It's from one of (our honorary Uncle) David Attenborough's nature series, where a Lyre bird is imitating an analog professional camera, a car alarm, and a chainsaw. If I hadn't watched it well over a decade ago, …
MrMcCall on Hacker News · 2025-03
In Why do some birds mimic the sounds of other species?
Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.