Humans and Animals Often Like the Same Mating Calls, Supporting a 150-Year-Old Observation by Charles Darwin

Global experiment supports Darwin's century-old hunch about auditory aesthetics

People tend to favor the exact same mating calls that female frogs, birds, and insects find most attractive in their own species. This overlap in auditory taste suggests that humans and other animals process sounds using similar sensory traits shaped by millions of years of evolution. The findings were recently published in the journal Science. Across the natural world, male animals use a variety of signals to attract a mate. These signals range…

Humans and animals find the same sounds 'beautiful'

Charles Darwin theorized that a sound, smell or color that's attractive to one species can be preferred by others too. A new study finds humans and animals do share preferences for certain sounds.

Humans and Animals Often Like the Same Mating Calls, Supporting a 150-Year-Old Observation by Charles Darwin

New research by Smithsonian scientists suggests that preferences for certain sounds might be evolutionarily conserved