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Humans are obviously pretty excited about music. But what if you're a whale, or a cow,
or a dog? Do animals like music?
Hello music-lovers, Trace here with the beat from the street on DNews -- Music is one of
the most basic pleasures humans have. The oldest surviving musical instruments are some
40,000 year old bone flutes from southwestern Germany. These ancient bone flutes are of
such high quality as to suggest we'd been making instruments for generations. Though,
we don't really NEED instruments to make it work, anthropologists have yet to find a culture
that didn't enjoy music, and according to zoologists it's not just us.
Research out of Boston University and published in the journal Science, explores the tendency
of birds and whales to follow the same rules as human music. Both birds and whales have
the ability to make sounds that AREN'T musical, but they don't. They naturally prefer to stay
in the realm of human composition. Birds have been known to sing in phrases and rhythms,
even adding percussion. Some use logs to amplify their song, and follow call and response methods
favored by jazz musicians. Humpback whale-song uses the A-B-A format of a musical phrase,
followed by a new phrase, and then a return to an altered form of the first! The Beatles
are known for A-B-A style, too!
The researchers conclude musical penchance can't just be a human trait, but that animals
are programmed to enjoy or follow the laws of harmonics. A study done in 2001 on English
cows found when cows were played songs while being milked the speed of the music affected
how much milk they produced! Specifically, the cows liked slow jams. Fast songs over
120 beats per minute caused milk production to drop, but slow songs under 100 beats per
minute increased production by three percent per day! Unfortunately, cows seem to hate
Jamiroquai. Which makes me like them less.
Neuroscientists and psychologists have studied the human brain looking for clues to why we
love music so much, and we've talked about some of the connections in the past on DNews.
Neuroscientists at Harvard Medical School scanned the brains of people listening to
music and found though the left hemisphere controls language and the right is considered
the musical half, there was a QUOTE "subtle interplay," between the two when listening
to music. More recently, it was discovered jazz musicians process music not as an aesthetic
pleasure, but as a LANGUAGE. Using fMRI scans on jazz musicians, they found our brains derive
meaning from musical phrases -- which sounds to ME a lot like like whales and birds!
So why do animals like music? Scientists believe it's built in! They like it for the same reasons
we like it, it feels right, but more study is needed.
Why do YOU think animals like music? Comment below and subscribe and you know what... tweet
your favorite songs @DNews Jared will add them to our Spotify playlist DNews Jamz! Come
listen to music with us. Thanks for watching!