Watch: How Math Helped Argentine Sparrows Relearn Lost Songs
Can a lost song be saved by mathematics?
For the chingolo, a sparrow native to Argentina, learning how to sing is an essential part of development. But for the most part, it doesn’t come naturally — a young male chingolo must be taught how to sing by his father. This process is crucial for the chingolo to defend its territory and attract a mate. According to Gabriel Mindlin, a physicist at the University of Buenos Aires, it’s also important for cultural preservation.
But with the chingolo population in decline due to habitat disruption, songs from long ago — unique to their geographic regions across the country — were being lost. To remedy this, Mindlin turned to math.
Dream of Birds, a short film from director Martín Benchimol, tells the story of how Mindlin and his collaborators used a mathematical model to create synthetic bird songs, reintroducing melodies previously thought lost to time.
Produced by the Simons Foundation and Sandbox Films, with Guardian Documentaries, the Simons Foundation’s support is part of Infinite Sums, a national initiative to expand ideas about what math is and how it intersects with culture.