[ExI] Music and (no subject)

[Dan TheBookMan]

Actually, I recall reading about the ability of other animals to recognize melodies as units (especially when shifted in register and timbre). This is testable, and it seems like cats, dogs, other apes, and many species of birds lack this ability. If memory serves, parrots seem to have this ability too. (One theory behind this is it helps with communication since humans vary much in size and have complex vocal patterns. You saying a common word sounds different than someone who is bigger or smaller or older or younger. Of course, the problem here would be size ranges in other animals with vocal abilities seems not always to be narrow.)

By the way, not sure why no one brought up wolves which tend to howl in unison and in response. (Dogs sometimes do that too. A few local dogs howl along when emergency service trucks go by with their alarms blaring.;)

Regards,

Dan
   Sample my Kindle books at:
http://author.to/DanUst

> On Aug 3, 2020, at 12:44 PM, Robert G. Kennedy III, PE via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> 
> I disagree with the premise, Ben.  Concluding that other species don't have music (or specifically a sense of rhythm as you said) just because we have not observed them tapping their feet (some of them don't have feet) seems awfully anthropocentric to me.
> 
> I would not be surprised if we eventually discover that all cetaceans and certain songbirds and tropical avians do have music because they have such an impressive amount of firmware and wetware for audio signal processing.  If on no other grounds than that beings above a certain threshold of complexity seem to have a tendency to find "off label" uses for their capabilities.  (Hence why I cited Keith's post also.)  Felids have an impressive audio range (coming and going), canids even more so.  For all we know, purring is cat music.  Any blind kitten can distinguish its mother's purr from a lot of background.  How about howling?  C'mon!
> 
> I would expect that communicating across great distances (relative to body length) or building *some* kind of community confers powerful advantage and would be selected for.
> 
> K3
> 
> PS. My ancient lnyx-point Siamese perks up whenever she hears "Jammin'" (it's what was playing on the car radio when I brought her home from the pound 16-ish years ago), hence her name Marlie.
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