Birdsong is the sound that birds make, usually through vocalization. This includes both calls and songs. Songs tend to be longer, more intricate vocalizations used for purposes like courtship or defending territory. Calls tend to serve more utilitarian purposes like alarms or keeping members of a flock in contact. While bird vocalizations may sound musical to our ears, it’s debatable whether birds truly experience their vocalizations as “music” in the same way humans experience music. There are certainly similarities between birdsong and human music, but also important differences.
What are the purposes of birdsong?
Birds use their songs and calls for a variety of important purposes:
- Establishing territories – Songs proclaim ownership of an area and ward off intruders
- Attracting mates – Elaborate and melodious songs help attract a mate
- Reuniting mates – Returning migratory birds sing to reunite with their mate
- Alarm calls – Warning calls alert other birds to danger
- Flock communication – Contact calls help keep members of a flock in touch while in flight
- Individual recognition – Songs and calls convey the bird’s identity
- Offspring recognition – Baby birds learn their parent’s unique calls
- Food source identification – Some calls identify the location of food sources
So while birdsong sounds musical and pleasant to human ears, for the birds it serves important natural functions related to breeding, territoriality, and survival. However, some researchers believe birds may also derive pleasure from singing, similar to how humans enjoy music.
Similarities between birdsong and human music
There are certainly some interesting parallels between musical properties of birdsong and human music:
- Melody – Songs have melodic patterns, rather than random notes
- Rhythm – Tempo and rhythmic patterns help define the song
- Repetition – Phrases are repeated over and over
- Structure – Songs have patterns that are recognizable
- Phrasing – Songs are divided into distinct phrases or motifs
- Pitch – Precise pitch patterns are used
- Dynamics – Songs vary in volume and speed
- Individual styles – Songs vary between individuals of a species
Some songbirds like lyrebirds can even mimic the complex songs of other species, much like human musicians learn to perform pieces composed by others. And birds that live close to human civilization may incorporate man-made sounds like car alarms into their repertoire, not unlike sampling in human music.
Differences between birdsong and human music
However, there are also important differences that suggest birds may not experience their vocalizations as “music” in the human sense:
- Lack of creativity – Bird songs are largely innate rather than composed
- No concept of melody – The melodic quality is incidental, not intentional
- NoMusical scale – Songs don’t conform to a 12-note octave
- No harmony – Birds only sing melodically, not harmonically
- No rhythmic independence – Birds can’t syncopate like humans drummers
- No abstract appreciation – Birds don’t enjoy others’ songs just for aesthetics
- No artistic motive – Songs serve practical purposes, not pure creativity
- No musical syntax – There are no “rules” of composition that birds manipulate for effect
So while birdsong shares many Surface features with human music, it appears to be fundamentally different in terms of creativity, abstraction, and appreciation for aesthetic qualities. From the bird’s perspective, their vocalizations are first and foremost a means to help them survive and reproduce. Music as humans experience it may be a uniquely human phenomenon.
Can birds be taught to understand music?
Some interesting research has tried to probe whether birds can be taught to perceive and understand music the way humans do. One famous case was Alex, an African grey parrot studied by scientist Irene Pepperberg. Alex underwent intensive training to associate English words with meanings, and could identify shapes, colors, materials, and quantities up to six.
To test if Alex could understand abstract concepts, Pepperberg tried teaching him the labels for musical notes. Alex was able to correctly label synthetic piano tones as “C”, “D”, “E”, “F” and so on, up to “G”. This suggests a parrot has the capacity to assign arbitrary meaning to pure tones the way humans do when distinguishing musical notes. However, it’s unclear if Alex actually perceived the notes as having a melodic relationship.
So while birds may be able to label discrete musical tones when extensively trained, there’s no evidence they can comprehend tones as part of an aesthetic, rule-governed musical system. Their natural vocalizations remain primarily functional signals rather than artistic expression. But some birds, especially intelligent parrots, may have latent capabilities approaching human musical perception.
Do birds enjoy and appreciate music?
Although birds lack a human-like conception of music, they nevertheless may enjoy and react to it in intriguing ways that suggest an appreciation, albeit limited. Some examples:
- Pet birds often visibly enjoy when owners play music, dancing and singing along
- Wild birds incorporate novel melodic sounds like ringtones into their repertoire
- Some birds can synchronize movements to a musical beat, akin to dancing
- Relaxing classical music reduces stress behaviors in birds in noisy environments
- Birds nesting near symphony halls integrate embellished, “improvised” songs
- Birds appear calmer and less stressed when they hear songs of their own species
So while not possessing a human-level comprehension of music, birds nonetheless evidently respond visibly and emotionally to musical elements and themes. Much remains unknown about precisely how birds experience these sounds cognitively and what specific feelings they evoke. But music clearly influences avian behavior and mood, hinting at an appreciative capacity.
How does birdsong compare to music created by other animals?
A few other animals have been studied for their capacity to intentionally create structured, aesthetic sounds akin to human music:
- Whales – Whale songs contain structured phrases, rhyme-like repetitions, and hierarchical organization
- Elephants – Elephants combine trumpeting, grumbling, roaring and other sounds into multi-phonic “solos”
- Primates – Chimps and monkeys sometimes “drum” rhythmically on logs and accompany their calls
- Dogs – Howling in a group, dogs can harmonize and synchronize their howls melodically
Of these, whale songs seem most akin to human musicality in their sophistication. Elephant solos also suggest an aesthetic, abstract appreciation. Primate drumming demonstrates a basic sense of rhythm and harmony. And group dog howling indicates sensitivity to pitch relationships and timing.
Birdsong is more elaborate in melody and form than most other animals’ vocalizations. However, it remains fixed and innate rather than freely composed. In that sense, birds may have a keener musical sense than many mammals, while still lacking the creative abstraction of human music. Only whales seem to share our advanced capacity for complex musical creativity and innovation.
Conclusion
To most human ears, birdsong is inherently musical. However, birds themselves don’t conceive of their vocalizations as “music” per se. Their songs and calls serve important natural functions rather than abstract artistic expression. There are undeniable parallels between birdsong and music, especially melodic structure and rhythmic patterns. But birds likely don’t appreciate these qualities aesthetically as humans do.
Research suggests some birds can be taught to discriminate pitch, but this doesn’t necessarily imply a human-like appreciation of melody and harmony. Nevertheless, birds visibly respond to and integrate musical elements in intriguing ways that hint at an elementary form of aesthetic appreciation. Overall birdsong occupies an intriguing middle ground between functional animal communication and higher artistic musicality, more sophisticated than most animals yet more rigidly innate than human music.
Birdsong Trait | Function | Music Parallel |
---|---|---|
Melody | Species recognition | Musical melodies |
Pitch patterns | Individual recognition | Musical scale |
Phrase repetition | Reinforce meaning | Musical motifs |
Rhythmic patterns | Aid memorization | Musical rhythm |
Song elaboration | Attract mate | Artistic expression |