SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
There are certain things in the natural world that appeal to human senses - the smell of pine needles, a brightly colored flower, the trill of songbirds in the morning. But none of these sounds, colors or smells exist in nature solely for our human enjoyment. A new study explores the overlap between what humans and wildlife find appealing. NPR's Nate Rott has more.
NATE ROTT, BYLINE: Like many heady ideas in the biological space, you could trace this back to Charles Darwin.
LOGAN JAMES: When he looked at the beautiful colors of bird feathers, he knew that those were probably meant to attract other birds, but he also found that they were really beautiful to him.
ROTT: Logan James is a biologist who studies animal communication, and he's long been interested in the idea that Darwin developed from this observation - that different species might share what Darwin called a taste for the beautiful. So James put it to test.
JAMES: We've studied acoustic preferences in a variety of species for a long time, and we find that, often, there are certain sounds that animals prefer over others. And this is usually in a mating context. So this is animals trying to attract another mate.
ROTT: For example, James has spent time studying a frog in Panama called the Tungara frog.
JAMES: And they make a call to attract females. It sounds like a (imitating frog sound) arr (ph). We call it a whine. But then the males can also add to that. They can add what we call chuck. So it'll be like, (imitating frog sound) here-ar, or here-ar-ar-ar (ph).
ROTT: But don't take his word for it. Here's the actual frog.
(SOUNDBITE OF FROG CALL)
ROTT: And again, with that little added spice he's talking about.
(SOUNDBITE OF FROG CALL)
JAMES: And those extra little sounds that they add, they are more attractive to the female frogs.
ROTT: A preference they've been able to prove by playing both sounds for female frogs on different speakers and seeing which one she hops towards. What James wanted to know is if humans share their tastes. So he and his coauthors got more than 4,000 volunteers to listen to the calls of 16 different species.
JAMES: Spanning, you know, other mammals, all the way to insects, frogs and birds.
ROTT: And in a computer game-like setting, they were presented with two sounds - one that the scientists knew was less appealing to the species...
(SOUNDBITE OF CRICKET CALL)
ROTT: ...Like that from a Pacific field cricket, and another that they knew the animal found more attractive.
(SOUNDBITE OF CRICKET CALL)
ROTT: OK, I get that one. Anyway, after listening to each pair, the human volunteers had to pick which one they preferred. This zebra finch...
(SOUNDBITE OF ZEBRA FINCH CALL)
ROTT: ...Or that.
(SOUNDBITE OF ZEBRA FINCH CALL)
ROTT: And the study, published in the journal, Science, found that overall, but not always, human preferences aligned with the animals'.
JAMES: And one of the most interesting findings was that, actually, the stronger the preference was in animals, the more likely we were to agree with them.
TAMRA MENDELSON: What this is showing is that humans and other animals like similar things in some cases.
ROTT: Tamra Mendelson is a biologist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She was not a part of this study.
MENDELSON: It's just, I think, the caveat and the caution is just that, in many cases, they don't.
ROTT: Mendelson studies the evolution of beauty.
MENDELSON: And beauty can apply to visual stimuli or acoustic stimuli.
ROTT: Some sound, color or smell that's evolved in nature that evokes a feeling in another animal. Because, she says, in a biological sense...
MENDELSON: That's what beauty is. It's a feeling that you're having.
ROTT: And she says, when you think about it that way, it makes sense that other animals with eyes, ears, noses and brains could have a neurological response too.
MENDELSON: We all have the hardware to experience beauty.
ROTT: Whether our brains experience it in the same way is something she'd love to figure out. After all, she says...
MENDELSON: To think that we're the only animal that has this experience, like, that would be weird.
ROTT: Yeah. I guess it would. Nate Rott, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF AMIE BLU SONG, "EVERYTHING ABOUT HER") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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