What animal are you? Humans and animals tend to like the same mating calls
Whether it’s a canary’s chirp or a treefrog’s croak, humans tend to prefer many of the same sounds that animals do themselves, a new study finds
A male hourglass tree frog (Dendropsophus ebraccatus) with an inflated vocal sac used to produce calls.
Your musical preferences might seem personal, but they could be linked to something more inherent: a recent study suggests that both animals and humans are drawn to similar mating calls. This discovery hints that humans might be more sensitive to animal sounds than previously assumed, though the reason remains unclear.
The natural world is filled with a myriad of sounds like squawks, screeches, and chirps. While humans can often identify distress calls or dog barks, many animal sounds might seem insignificant to an untrained ear. However, research involving over 4,000 individuals shows a different perspective. Participants listened to pairs of mating calls from 16 species, including mammals, birds, frogs, and insects, and chose which they preferred. On average, humans favored the same calls as the animals did. (Try it yourself here.)
“I was honestly surprised,” remarks lead author Logan James, a postdoctoral fellow at McGill University and a visiting scholar at the University of Texas at Austin. “We had reasons to believe this could be true, but I wasn’t sure it would work out.”
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James and his team compared the participants’ choices to the animals’ “preferences,” determined by their reactions in previous studies.
“We discovered that people were significantly more likely than chance to select the same sound preferences as the animals,” James explains. “This was quite remarkable to us.”
Additionally, humans were more inclined to prefer the animals’ choice when their responses were strongest, hinting that sound preferences might be shared across species. Interestingly, musicians or those familiar with animal sounds, like birdwatchers, weren’t more adept at choosing the calls animals found “attractive” than non-experts.
This trend was evident across species, from frogs to birds, mammals to insects. Humans generally preferred the mating calls favored by the animals themselves, rather than by random choice.
Some exceptions were noted: Song Sparrows and a Pacific field cricket showed high agreement rates between humans and animals. Conversely, the calls of the gelada, a monkey from Ethiopia, didn’t resonate with humans as much. Interestingly, calls with more “acoustic adornments” like chirps and clicks were preferred, according to James.
David Reby, an ethology professor at Jean Monnet University in France, praises the study as “well conducted,” adding, “I wish I’d been part of the team.”
A lingering question remains: why do humans and animals share these preferences? While animals might be drawn to calls that suggest a mate’s size or strength, humans likely aren’t making the same evaluations, Reby suggests.
“This demands further investigation to unravel what is happening in the minds of both animals and humans during these evaluations,” he says.
The explanation might lie in how both humans and animals process sound. “We all need to interpret vibrations in the air and encode information to decide on actions,” James clarifies.
This also prompts questions on how humans perceive “beauty” in nature, from birdsong to floral fragrances and butterfly colors.
“These signals were designed to appeal, although not specifically to humans,” James notes. “It’s fascinating to consider that we might enjoy this beauty because we share fundamental sensory processing with other animals.”
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