WATCH: Can Birds Keep Musical Time? N.J. Professor Says Yes

ESSEX COUNTY, NJ — Can birds keep musical time? The answer to that question may unlock key insight into the evolution of musical ability in humans, an international team of scientists and musicians says.

“The tuneful behavior of some song birds parallels that of human musicians,” a study between an international team of researchers recently declared via a paper published in Royal Society Open Science.

The team of researchers included David Rothenberg, professor of philosophy and music at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) in Newark, as well as researchers from the City University of New York (CUNY), the Freie Universität Berlin and Macquarie University in Australia.

Key to the study’s findings was the pied butcherbird, a “very musical species” whose song shares many commonalities with human music, according to Eathan Janney, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Psychology at CUNY’s Hunter College.

The pied butcherbird’s call demonstrates that the more complex a bird’s repertoire, the better it is at “singing in time,” rhythmically interacting with other birds more skillfully than those who know fewer songs, researchers claim.

Watch the video below to see an example of a butcherbird’s solo song, as well as the song of another butcherbird and an Australian magpie.

Constance Scharff, the director of the animal behavior laboratory at the Freie Universität Berlin, stated that pied butcherbirds, not unlike jazz musicians, “play around” with their tunes, balancing repetition and variation.

“This finding suggests that such musical virtuosity may signify more than just the evolution of a way for birds to establish territorial dominance and facilitate mating,” the study claimed. “It may also provide evidence that musical ability in birds was a precursor to the evolution of the many dimensions of musical ability in humans.”

“Science and music may have different criteria for truth, but sometimes their insights need to be put together to make sense of the beautiful performances we find in nature,” NJIT’s Rothenberg professed.

Read the full study here.

File Photo: Quartl, Wikimedia Commons

Video: NJIT