Feeding performance, kinematics and skills change with age in a granivorous songbird

Changes in neuromuscular performance due to maturation and ageing affect a wide range of motor behaviours in birds and mammals. The consequences may be especially pronounced during forceful and complex movements, such as feeding on seeds in songbirds, which require well-developed jaw muscles and fast, strongly coordinated beak and tongue movements. We investigated how feeding performance changes with age by filming juvenile and adult domestic canaries repeatedly over a span of two years with high-speed video. We extracted metrics of feeding performance, beak kinematics and seed handling skills of individuals during feeding on seeds with different characteristics. Age significantly affected several feeding metrics on the more challenging hemp seed, but not on the smaller and softer canary seed. Beak-opening frequency displayed a parabolic pattern, increasing early in life and slightly declining at old age, with no sex differences. Seed handling skills improved linearly with age and more ..., , # Feeding performance, kinematics and skills change with age in a granivorous songbird

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.bcc2fqzs5](10.5061/dryad.bcc2fqzs5)

## Description of the data and file structure

This dataset contains all the necessary data for reproducing the results of the research, as described in the manuscript with the name:

'Feeding performance, kinematics and skills change with age in a granivorous songbird'

The data includes raw measurements obtained from both manual video analysis and automated beak tip tracking using DeepLabCut software, as well as the code for statistical analysis.

In summary, this dataset includes:

* 10 .csv files of raw measurements, each pertaining to a specific metric (or group of metrics), and 1 'master' .csv file ('age_summary') combining the data of the other 10 files.
* an R-file with the code for statistical analyses and associated .txt files (see below; code/software).

### Files and variables

#### General terminology (this is a list of ter...,