humans are obviously pretty excited aboutmusic. but what if you're a whale, or a cow, or a dog? do animals like music? hello music-lovers, trace here with the beatfrom the street on dnews -- music is one of the most basic pleasures humans have. theoldest surviving musical instruments are some 40,000 year old bone flutes from southwesterngermany. these ancient bone flutes are of such high quality as to suggest we'd beenmaking instruments for generations. though, we don't really need instruments to make itwork, anthropologists have yet to find a culture that didn't enjoy music, and according tozoologists it's not just us. research out of boston university and publishedin the journal science, explores the tendency
of birds and whales to follow the same rulesas 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 havebeen known to sing in phrases and rhythms, even adding percussion. some use logs to amplifytheir song, and follow call and response methods favored by jazz musicians. humpback whale-songuses the a-b-a format of a musical phrase, followed by a new phrase, and then a returnto an altered form of the first! the beatles are known for a-b-a style, too! the researchers conclude musical penchancecan't just be a human trait, but that animals are programmed to enjoy or follow the lawsof harmonics. a study done in 2001 on english
cows found when cows were played songs whilebeing 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 productionto drop, but slow songs under 100 beats per minute increased production by three percentper day! unfortunately, cows seem to hate jamiroquai. which makes me like them less. neuroscientists and psychologists have studiedthe human brain looking for clues to why we love music so much, and we've talked aboutsome of the connections in the past on dnews. neuroscientists at harvard medical schoolscanned the brains of people listening to music and found though the left hemispherecontrols language and the right is considered
the musical half, there was a quote "subtleinterplay," between the two when listening to music. more recently, it was discoveredjazz musicians process music not as an aesthetic pleasure, but as a language. using fmri scanson jazz musicians, they found our brains derive meaning from musical phrases -- which soundsto me a lot like like whales and birds! so why do animals like music? scientists believeit's built in! they like it for the same reasons we like it, it feels right, but more studyis needed. why do you think animals like music? commentbelow and subscribe and you know what... tweet your favorite songs @dnews jared will addthem to our spotify playlist dnews jamz! come listen to music with us. thanks for watching!