I don't think it's only humans. All kinds of animals would benefit from knowing that awhoo comes from a wolf and that, in this example, awhoo awhoo is the same sound coming from the same wolf or that an animal recognizes that the first awhoo comes from one wolf and the second awhoo from another wolf.
It also helps for an animal to know the volume of these awhoos as it is a good proxy for closeness, and therefore danger. It's even a good thing to know the rhythm of these awhoos as it helps again to assess if these wolves, or wolf, is on the move while awhooing or on the move between awhoos.
And this is just one example I'm currently making up bit at least makes sense that for many animals: tempo, volume, rhythm, patterns in sound, it's needed for survival. So evolution will select for it.
Music is a lot more than just those things I think, but it at least shows some evolutionary backbone as to why I believe that more animals have been evolved to like music. At least, some elephants sure seem to enjoy a good piano [1].
Musical appreciation is almost shockingly absent from animals.
One possible reason is that allowing one’s nervous system to be entrained to external rhythms is potentially exploitable. So humans may have evolved the ability to “let the guard down.”
This is pretty fascinating, do you have anything else to say about it? Makes me think of mesmerism and snake-charmers, although IDK how real that is.
Another thing that comes to mind is recent pop-sci talking about how individual bees can measure time pretty accurately, which I personally found very surprising, even though I've heard that they "dance" for communication.
Rhythm appreciation is neurologically very interesting since it requires several basic abilities acting at once, including tracking time, but also a certain amount of memory and pattern recognition. Animal appreciation of melodic stuff and harmony is interesting too but seems much harder to study and more dependent on physical aspects of ears
I have a theory for this, but I don't know how I'd test for it (and I don't work in the field).
We have a time window within which audio stimulae are interpreted as being "the same sound". When you hear two impulses outside that window, they seem to be different sounds. You can play with this by looping two similar or copies of a sound and then varying their offset a few ms either way. They'll move in and out of seeming like the same and different sounds, and around the crossover point you get ringing effects (especially if there's more than two copies, such as with tight echoes).
To me, this seems like a fundamental part of music interpretation. Not the core, but very significant.
Also, different species have different time perceptions. (I mean, I'm kinda guessing, but they all have different heart rate ranges, attention spans, brain wave frequency ranges etc, all of which imply to me a varience in time perception). Our music makes sense against our time perception; we're quite sensitive to it... raise the bmp of a track by just 2 or 3 and it feels quite different. Change from 50% swing to 53% (or 52 if you're really sensitive) and your sense of the groove changes meaningfully. Pass all that through the "different perception of time" and it's easy to imagine our music means nothing to other species.
It also seems likely to me that:
a) most species have different sized windows
b) they perceive blends of frequencies quite differently depending on the window length
So, what seems like coherent, organised sound with a "story" or "meaning" or "structure" to us, probably becomes mush to most other species.
Then note that the different frequency ranges in which animals hear, the different ways their ears focus sound... etc. Us humans are creating organised sound around the biology of our auditory system; the perception of organisation is likely very different for most other species.
Just the difference between boom and bap, boom ... bap... boom... bap... tells us "something". but it's gonna tell you something different if you hear it as ttppssssss daaaaapppp ttpppssssss ddaaappppp.
> All kinds of animals would benefit from knowing that awhoo comes from a wolf and that, in this example, awhoo awhoo is the same sound coming from the same wolf or that an animal recognizes that the first awhoo comes from one wolf and the second awhoo from another wolf.
Interesting choice of example. Dog howls are apparently intentionally off-key.
The goal of the basic choir is to sound like one voice in perfect harmony.
The goal of a pack howling over long distances is apparently to communicate that every member of the pack is present - so each voice is out of harmony with the rest.
It also helps for an animal to know the volume of these awhoos as it is a good proxy for closeness, and therefore danger. It's even a good thing to know the rhythm of these awhoos as it helps again to assess if these wolves, or wolf, is on the move while awhooing or on the move between awhoos.
And this is just one example I'm currently making up bit at least makes sense that for many animals: tempo, volume, rhythm, patterns in sound, it's needed for survival. So evolution will select for it.
Music is a lot more than just those things I think, but it at least shows some evolutionary backbone as to why I believe that more animals have been evolved to like music. At least, some elephants sure seem to enjoy a good piano [1].
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFIT87yPNYk