Seal and sea lion brains have evolved to support volitional control of vocal behavior and learning.

Seals and sea lions have highly developed volitional breathing control, to which the phocid seals add vocal production learning, including mimicry. In this work, using histology and ex vivo diffusion magnetic resonance imaging tractography, we provide evidence for a phylogenetic spectrum of accumulative neural adaptations supporting aspects of volitional vocal control across pinnipeds. Otariids and phocid seals, but not coyotes, have a direct connection between the vocal motor cortex and phonatory brainstem nuclei. Harbor seals showed hypertrophic connectivity between the anterior ventrolateral thalamus and the vocal premotor cortex—part of a forebrain circuit related to vocal learning in birds and mimicry in humans and parrots. We demonstrate that phocid seals have auditory-premotor pathways potentially related to developmental call learning. Editor's summary: Humans are vocal learners, but many other species also display this trait, including birds, bats, and seals. Seals within the family Phocidae especially are known for this, and harbor seals are even known to imitate human speech. Cook et al. looked at opportunistically obtained brains from seals and sea lions, with coyotes as an outgroup carnivore control. They found a series of neural adaptations that support the volitional control of vocalizations in the marine mammals but not the coyotes, with the harbor seals showing a forebrain circuit similar to that found in mimicking birds and humans. —Sacha Vignieri [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]