Re: [asa] Music and Evolution

That is a VERY interesting question, whether other animals are
musical. Of course any objective research into the subject would be
extremely difficult. I have four dogs with varying degrees of musical
ability. Lefty seems to have no ability at all and can't even howl.
Two have beautiful musical sounding howls, but one takes particlar
joy at howling along with music. Whenever I pick up my guitar Johnny
(big greyhound) picks out a not in his range and tries to match it.
And he does a better job than many people! He definitely discerns
pitch and seems to take enormous "joy" in duplicating it. There is
also the rythmic aspect of human music, and I don't know if my dogs
can conceive or appreciate rythem.

As for the sexual attraction theory for the origin of music, or
intelligence for that matter, I don't like it. Features that have
arisen through sexual attraction/selection result in a sexual di-
morphism, with one sex usually the male developing the feature more
than the other sex. Although some might argue, we don't see greater
musical ability or intelligence in males.

Brent

---- Jon Tandy <tandyland@earthlink.net> wrote:

=============
Below is today's commentary from Chuck Colson, on the origins of music
through presumed evolutionary explanations. Just curious what comments
might be elicited on the subject.
One good question might be whether music is truly a distinctly human
characteristic or not (what about dogs which sometimes howl together
when
one starts -- are they making music in a sense? What about songbirds,
etc. -
can we say that they are not making music in a way that we humans
define as
music?)

Jon Tandy

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Received on Tue Oct 17 16:52:11 2006