The first words of a baby are almost always hard to make any sense of, and that behavior is not limited to humans, researchers reported in the Friday edition of the journal Science. The latest study on a species of birds, the zebra finches, revealed that baby birds also babble, just like human babies, before learning a song.

Scientists revealed that these birds have a particular area of their brain devoted to this early stage, while as adults they begin to use another area. One part of the brain is used during the first 30 to 45 days, and becomes inactive after the birds learn their song and start to use a different part of the brain, known as HCV.

Michael Fee, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, leader of the study, and his team of researchers conducted an experiment by inactivating the HCV area of the brain. They made the amazing discovery that adult finches started babbling like juveniles while HCV was inactive.

Fee said the process of learning how to sing is very similar to that of learning how to move, which we find in mammals.

And the similarities between birds and humans’ learning process continue, Fee said, as baby birds seem to learn adult songs by imitating their parents, just like human babies repeat what they hear from their parents.

“We tend to think of young animals making random movements and playing, and it doesn’t seem to have a reason,” Fee said, according to National Geographic. “But the reason is, in order to learn, they need to try out different things.”

The striking similarities between us and the birds could give scientists a better idea on the human learning process, and go further into how we think creatively, Fee said.