Animals music
Why do some animals like music, even though they don't make it? Why do we like music? Does it have a purpose?
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Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by TellMeStudios for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm Fraser McGruer and I'm here with Peter Coghill and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights and this week we're discussing whether animals like music and if so, why?
Speaker B:Peter, do animals like music? Well it seems so, it seems that some do. This question was prompted by a nice story, a cheery story that came from the Cornish Seal Sanctuary where a student had done a bit of research looking at the effect of music on the seals who lived there and it was noted that there seemed to be a calming effect for certain types of music, I think mainly sort of classical music and so buoyed by this experience the keepers at the seal sanctuary decided to put on a little concert for them so they hired a flautist to come and play some music and all the seals seemingly had a great time. So it was, apart from being quite a cute story, I thought it was interesting, it formed the question in my mind, why is it that some animals apparently have an appreciation for music even though seals particularly don't have a musical whisker on their face? They've never evolved to make it, so why do they have machinery to appreciate it?
Speaker A:Okay, just one thing which is how you measure the effects of calming or calming effects in seals, I mean, what does an anxious seal look like?
Speaker B:That's an important question, so I just, for the sake of posing the question I'm assuming that the experienced seal handlers, if that's the right term, they know what a calm seal looks like as opposed to an agitated seal, so they know what a happy seal looks like as opposed to a sad seal, so that they're able to… It's probably in the interview questions, I should think. Yeah, able to spot a change in behaviour that's reliable enough to…
Speaker C:Yeah, I'd want there to be some serious control studies here, I'd want them to observe the seals under when the music was being played and when the music wasn't being played, but for the keepers to not be aware, so they'd be seeing silent film and they would have to guess, because the trouble is with this sort of study, notoriously observer bias is a problem, like with the study into whether or not brightly coloured orange drinks make children hyperactive, it turned out to be based entirely on whether or not the parents believed their children to have consumed the orange drink, rather than whether or not they had, so let's just assume that the seals like it.
Speaker B:So to satisfy your need for analytical robustness, there are quite a lot of trials that look at, double blind trials, that look at different animals, lots of rhesus monkeys, because rhesus monkeys are quite good for behavioural, psychological trials.
Speaker C:I believe it, there's so many videos on the internet of animals doing funny things in response to music, my favourite one is the guy who plays a trombone and a herd of cows walk up to watch him playing the trombone, it's really good, google it. Animals like music, let's just run with that.
Speaker A:Yeah, I was going to say, look, what are some other examples, but I think we've more or less covered that already, but also, I think it leads to another question, which is why do humans like music, why do we respond to music, we are after all another, just another kind of animal. So yeah, rather than sort of try and think of other examples, but I mean, just another one is, I think it's reasonably well documented that dairy farmers play music to their cows and apparently increases milk production. I don't know if that's just...
Speaker B:Yeah, I spotted that one, and likewise, pregnant sows are often played music as well, it has a similar calming effect, especially when they're in their intensive period, so their second, I think it's the second trimester, where they're no longer isolated, now back in the pens in big groups, they enjoy it, and I think it has a positive effect on the health of the offspring as well.
Speaker C:And if you play dubstep music to bees, they make mustard instead of honey.
Speaker B:We're still trying to track down the reference on that one, aren't we, but yes, we heard it somewhere down the pub.
Speaker A:Okay, so look, let's assume for a moment we've answered the first part of the question, do animals like music? The answer is yes. Then the question we need to address is why, who wants to go for it?
Speaker C:Well I think there's, let's just say we don't know, and I'm including humans in that, we don't know why humans like it. I think one of the important, so one important starting hypothesis, right, so let's just run with the fact that... I think we do know why humans like music. No we don't, I've got no idea. Okay, why, on what level?
Speaker A:Because I'm a human, and I like music, and I know why I do.
Speaker C:Okay, well why do you claim you like music?
Speaker A:Because I like the way it makes me feel.
Speaker C:Right, but why does, that is not answering the question of why it makes you feel like
Speaker A:that. No, but we know that I do like it.
Speaker C:Yeah, but nobody's questioning whether we like it, the question is why. Why does music make people feel positive, okay? Yeah, you're right, we don't have the answer to that. No. You carry on. And so I think one interesting starting point is Steven Pinker, who I think I'd refer to probably too much, but he's one of my favourite, he's a sort of evolutionary linguist, calls it sort of auditory cheesecake, by which he means it's not dismissing music as unimportant, but he's saying there is no, okay, so observationally, there doesn't seem to be a kind of music centre in the brain. When we listen to music, it seems to stimulate different bits of our brain which are associated with other tasks, you know, so for example, apparently when we listen to music, it stimulates both our sort of oral, our temporal lobe, and also other bits of our brain associated with understanding structure and pattern recognition and stuff. But it isn't like there's a bit of our brain dedicated to music. Now he says, well, it's a bit like cheesecake, we don't have a cheesecake centre in our brain, but we like cheesecake because it stimulates lots of other things that we have evolved to do, like, you know, liking sugar and so on. And his point is that, well, perhaps music is like that, and I think, you know, that seems to me a good starting point to say, well, okay, music works because it delivers lots of things that, as it happens, we like. So it might be that there are, say for example, certain sounds that we obviously like and certain sounds we don't like, like nails being scraped down a blackboard, and, you know, we like the sound of rushing, perhaps rushing water or the sound of soothing, of winds blowing or those sorts of things. And it might be that music in some way triggers the same sensations that we have when we hear sounds that are associated with pleasant sensations. So that seems like a plausible starting point. But then there's all sorts of other things, you know, the social effects of music that people seem to like performing music together. There's one theory I heard that is that we like rhythmic music because when you're hunting, it's better to walk in step because you're masking how many of you there are and you're less likely to... I know it's fun. I'm not so, I mean, you know, there's a general problem with when we observe that humans, let's say, have evolved. I'm not going to say have evolved to like music because that's not quite right, but have evolved in such a way that music is pleasant for them. We don't have any insight into why that is, you know, what particular tasks we were up to. We can only theorize. We can't see what the design constraints were that enabled liking music to be the result of evolutionary forces. So we can only guess. And so, you know, all of these things, if you can point to something which seems to be a benefit of music for humans in survival terms, that probably will contribute to its, you know, its prevalence.
Speaker A:So that's sort of talking about humans. If we're talking about animals, are we talking about anything different than we would be if we're talking about...
Speaker C:Well, the fact that we like it for reasons that perhaps have an evolutionary explanation, but we haven't evolved a music center, as it were, which is unique to humans, suggests that we, you know, we should expect animals to like music. Peter?
Speaker B:Well, I think an interesting distinction we could explore is that humans produce music apparently, seemingly just for the sake of enjoyment itself, whereas I couldn't really find any examples of animals doing the same. There's good evidence in animal kingdom that music production or what is apparently music in birds and in whales and in other animals has some sort of function, either to warn or to attract a mate or to... as a form of communication. So whales, it's sort of generally assumed that they sing to each other to pass on information. So we are sort of unique, maybe this is hubris, but we seem to be unique that we do it for the sake of it, just for enjoyment's sake.
Speaker C:Yeah, I mean, let's think about something like visual arts, like paintings of stuff and moving images of stuff. Now, a chimp can sit there and watch TV. There's no doubt. And he can understand what's going on. A chimp will happily watch images on the TV and understand them, right?
Speaker A:Understand that they are images or understand the plot line to the only way is Essex or something?
Speaker C:Almost certainly that. Yeah, understand, appreciate what they are images of. Understand what their image is of, is what I mean, right? So why don't chimps make TV programs? Now, it might be a similar question, right? Animals can understand music for the same reason that we understand music, but it doesn't mean that they have the technology to do it. And likewise, with the production of sort of imitative art, as it happens, animals do perhaps like looking at a picture of a field or something. You can imagine a cow looking at a field of really nice, lush grass, looking at a picture of it and really enjoying looking at that. But they don't make pictures of grass because they can't. And I wonder if it's just as simple as that, that they just can't do it. But on the other hand, of course, you know, the question is why they don't sing more now. I mean, so how do we know whether or not, how do we know when a bird is singing, a blackbird or something, how do we know that that's functional rather than for fun? If it serves a function as well.
Speaker B:It's difficult. I think it's difficult to prove because you're trying to prove the negative, that it doesn't just, whatever the result of the experiment was, wouldn't have happened anyway without the singing. But I think that generally, from the scant research I was able to do, that there's little evidence to suggest that it's done ever for simply for pleasure.
Speaker C:Yeah, but I mean, I think, but perhaps a more cynical approach, not more cynical, let's say more objective, you would look at the way that humans perform music and you'd say, ah, now look, music, humans don't perform music for fun. They do it as a social bonding tool. They do it as a demonstration of sexual fitness. You know, being able to perform music shows that you're intelligent and dexterous and so on. These are the reasons that humans perform music and humans would say, no, we do it for fun. And the blackbird might say, no, I do it for fun. But as it happens, what it does for fun, the reason it finds it fun is because of the effects it achieves.
Speaker B:Yeah. Now, I'm glad you said that, because that brings us to Nora the cat, who was a YouTube hit. And it's a typical lol cat doing a silly thing. Yeah, great, great, great, great, great entertainment fodder. But I think it's probably a good example of an animal that has somehow learned that playing on the piano, hitting keys on the piano is endearing to their owners and they get more attention. They have little understanding of what they're doing and probably no appreciation of the tonality or atonality of what they're producing. It's partly mimicry because the humans playing the piano get attention and things like that. And also they get petted or fed or rewarded in some way.
Speaker C:YouTube fame. I mean, cats are notoriously obsessed with YouTube fame. Yeah, they are. Absolutely.
Speaker B:So does someone, you know, do people join bands and perform music for similar kind of base aims? Like, you know, you become a rock star because you crave attention and you play the piano because you like showing off.
Speaker C:And I think this is important to remember with evolutionary explanations, is that what we feel we are motivated to do something for and the explanation for why we feel that can be very different things. So, you know, as it happens, you know, the best explanation for why we want to go out and meet girls is because, you know, humans who did that are more likely to perpetuate their genes. And so the genes for going out and meeting girls, if you're a bloke, you know, are more likely to be perpetuated. Now that's not, you don't think, oh, I want to go out and meet some girls so I can perpetuate my genes. That isn't what you think. That is not how you experience it. You know, so the point is that we might experience wanting to play music for all sorts of reasons. We might think, oh, I really, you know, I like the feeling of the keys under my fingers or, you know, this makes me feel happy or I feel better when I exercise to this particular type of music. But that doesn't, you know, actually why we have evolved feeling those things to music might well be something very different.
Speaker A:OK, I think we sort of, you know, quite unusually, we sort of more or less wrap that one up. I think we put that one to bed.
Speaker C:Oh, good. No, I don't think so. I think, yeah, I mean, because you sort of, for a lot of the thing, a lot of the explanations, you, it doesn't really explain why music takes the form that it does. You know, why, why music particularly? Why, why the 1-4-5 chord progression? You know, why, why jazz? Why all these things that sort of work? And we know they work, but we don't really know why particular, that particular thing, whether or not that's a complete historical accident. You know, why, why rock and roll in particular? You can't, it's difficult to point to an evolutionary explanation for why that is. So there's, I mean, I think, and, you know, even things like a lot of the sort of harmony and structure of music, you can, you can kind of explain scientific, you can say, well, you know, an octave, for example, sounds consonant to us because it's exactly double the frequency. So our ears, if you like, our ears have to do less work in understanding consonant sounding chords than in dissonant sounding chords. There's less information to process, you know, in a consonant chord because, you know, the chords are kind of contained, the notes are kind of more neatly nested inside one another. But why, why that means we should like it? Who knows? That's another question. Why do we find that pleasant to listen to?
Speaker B:And it opens up all sorts of other difficult questions. So if we assume that the cognitive cheesecake is a sort of an emergent property of the brain, the appreciation of music, what other things are emergent properties? Is intelligence itself an emergent property that's there just to service the need to procreate?
Speaker C:Yeah. And I mean, what if there's some other thing out there, some other equivalent of cheesecake? I mean, what if it turns out that sticking blue dots onto a big yellow sheet somehow triggers something really exciting with us? And we really love it. There's what if there's all sorts of things out there? You know, what if it turns out that sort of bending over backwards while drinking milkshake is really exciting. It's just that we've never tried it.
Speaker B:You know, and if we could work out what the underlying principles drivers are, then we could design the optimum board game that everyone finds incredibly exciting and entertaining.
Speaker C: ch by Renfro and Gosling from: Speaker A:I would say probably American country.
Speaker C:Country and Western fans. They tend to be hardworking and outgoing. There we go. 50-50, I'd say on that.
Speaker B:What about you, Peter? What would be your? I think kind of electro music, but not fast dance, kind of chilled out electro and jazz probably my two.
Speaker C:Yeah, jazz fans have high self-esteem, are creative, outgoing and at ease. But so far, these are all positive. But anyway. Not really. No, they're just different.
Speaker B:It's a bit like a musical horoscope so far, isn't it?
Speaker C:Yeah, exactly. No, because I'm not really down here. So I was looking for, I mean, I quite like blues and jazz, but I really like everything. I mean, I like all kinds of music. In terms of my home genre, it would be singer-songwriters of the late 60s and early 70s. But that's not down here. So, you know, that would be folk more or less. But they don't have folk here, disappointingly. But yeah. No personality. No, exactly. I think obviously nobody else went for that.
Speaker A:OK, good. I like that. So that's a good note to finish on. OK, gentlemen. Well, thank you. And thank you to our audience for listening to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast. I'm Fraser McGruer. We've been here with Peter Coghill and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights. And until next time, goodbye.
