Jump to content
Join the Unexplained Mysteries community today! It's free and setting up an account only takes a moment.
- Sign In or Create Account -

Can animals make real music?


Still Waters

Recommended Posts

What do you get if you give musical instruments to a group of elephants? Just a loud noise, or an orchestra? One elephant ensemble in Thailand demonstrates - according to its creators - that animals can really make music.

http://www.bbc.co.uk...gazine-24400364

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

Define 'real' music?

However, cool story :) I love how intelligent elephants are. Such beautiful beasts

Edited by The Id3al Experience
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

My dog makes music while wagging her tail! More of a beat really but it sounds good & if you was to put it through a syntheziser & add a few other dog or animal sounds I can't see how you wouldn't consider that to be music!! Also, birds sing all kinds of beautiful songs & when you think about it, they are related to dinosaurs in which case they would be amongst the earliest of music making creatures on the planet!

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

^ Yup, a lot of bird songs are 'musical' .. if we can describe music as pleasing sounds in pleasing patterns .

Some Classical music pieces seem to have borrowed sequences of notes from bird songs.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

As with whales singing, there are two pitfalls in this kind of thinking. One is stretching the definition of "music" so as to include things that really are something else (animals vocalize for many reasons) and the other is anthropomorphizing into animals things we do.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think humans copied animal sounds and the human heartbeat the result evolved into what we call music.

I can imagine a cave mother making soothing humming sounds to her baby in time to it's heartbeat.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Human music comes from the whistle of the wind, the rustle of the leaves, the rumble of the thunder, the splashing of the waves and the "bubbling" of the brook, the galloping of horses and howl of wolves and of course the heartbeat we hear in our ears as we fall asleep.

It is just that human music is still something else entirely. Especially Western serious music. By coincidence earlier this evening I spent over an hour concentratedly listening to Shostakovitch's Seventh Symphony, and in the process "remembered" Stalin (although I don't know if the composer intended that, I suspect so -- at any rate sounds of a very human period of history).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.