Cross-Species Research in Biomusicality: Methods, Pitfalls, and Prospects

Duengen, Diandra; Sarfati, Marianne; Ravignani, Andrea

doi:10.7551/mitpress/14186.003.0008

Cited by 1 publication

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“…On the mixed account, music can function both cooperatively and competitively, and doing so simultaneously allows different forms of communication to occur in parallel at group and individual levels [20]. Taking a comparative approach [11,21,22], this hypothesis was motivated by observations that in some non-human animals (e.g. flashing fireflies and chorusing crickets and frogs), simultaneous cooperation and competition is manifest in rhythmically coordinated communal displays produced by groups of males to attract female mates [23–25].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sex-related communicative functions of voice spectral energy in human chorusing

Keller,

Lee,

König

et al. 2023

Biol. Lett.

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Music is a human communicative art whose evolutionary origins may lie in capacities that support cooperation and/or competition. A mixed account favouring simultaneous cooperation and competition draws on analogous interactive displays produced by collectively signalling non-human animals (e.g. crickets and frogs). In these displays, rhythmically coordinated calls serve as a beacon whereby groups of males ‘cooperatively’ attract potential female mates, while the likelihood of each male competitively attracting an actual mate depends on the precedence of his signal. Human behaviour consistent with the mixed account was previously observed in a renowned boys choir, where the basses—the oldest boys with the deepest voices—boosted their acoustic prominence by increasing energy in a high-frequency band of the vocal spectrum when girls were in an otherwise male audience. The current study tested female and male sensitivity and preferences for this subtle vocal modulation in online listening tasks. Results indicate that while female and male listeners are similarly sensitive to enhanced high-spectral energy elicited by the presence of girls in the audience, only female listeners exhibit a reliable preference for it. Findings suggest that human chorusing is a flexible form of social communicative behaviour that allows simultaneous group cohesion and sexually motivated competition.

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