Date: October 6, 2016
Source: New Jersey Institute of
Technology
The
tuneful behavior of some songbirds parallels that of human musicians. That's
the conclusion presented in a recent paper published by an international team
of researchers, among them David Rothenberg, distinguished professor of
philosophy and music in NJIT's Department of Humanities. Other members of the
team are from the City University of New York (CUNY), the Freie Universität
Berlin and Macquarie University in Australia.
"Temporal
regularity increases with repertoire complexity in the Australian pied
butcherbird's song" was published online in Royal Society Open Science.
A
Very Musical Species
The
pied butcherbird, a very musical species, provided a wealth of intriguing data
for analysis by co-author Eathan Janney, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of
Psychology at CUNY's Hunter College. Janney based his analysis upon years of
data collected and also analyzed by violinist and biomusicologist Hollis Taylor
of Macquarie University, who has previously published extremely detailed
analyses of butcherbird songs. "Since pied butcherbird songs share so many
commonalities with human music," Taylor writes, "this species could
possibly revolutionize the way we think about the core values of music."
In the
past, claims that musical principles are integral to birdsong were largely met
with skepticism and dismissed as wishful thinking. However, the extensive
statistical and objective analysis of the new paper demonstrates that the more
complex a bird's repertoire, the better he or she is at singing in time,
rhythmically interacting with other birds much more skillfully than those who
know fewer songs. The accompanying video includes a sample of a butcherbird's
solo song, as well as the song of another butcherbird and an Australian magpie.
No comments:
Post a Comment