New Research Finds Humans Prefer the Same Animal Calls as Frogs, Birds and Even Bugs

The team tested humans' preferences for different animal sounds using an online computer game. More than 4,000 participants from around the world helped with the citizen science project, listening to pairs of animal sounds from 16 different species across the animal kingdom and then indicating their preference for one or the other. Previous research studies had already established which sound in each pair was preferred by females of that species. The researchers tested whether humans showed a preference for the same sounds the animals preferred.

"In gamified citizen science, people volunteer for experiments simply because they're fun and interesting," said Samuel Mehr, an associate professor at Yale University's Child Study Center and the senior author of the study. "The method is perfect for answering questions from evolutionary biology where we aim to study phenomena across many species as opposed to just a few. Our game enabled us to test lots of humans' preferences for lots of different sounds."

The research team found broad overlap between human and animal sound preferences. They discovered that the stronger an animal's preference for a particular sound, the more likely it was that a human was to select that sound as their favorite. And the human participants were quicker to select the more attractive sound. Agreement between animals and humans was strongest for lower-frequency (lower pitch) sounds and those with acoustic adornments, such as "trills," "clicks" and "chucks."

"Darwin noted that animals seem to have a 'taste for the beautiful' that sometimes parallels our own preferences," said Ryan, who is also the author of a popular science book named for the same Darwin quote. "We show that Darwin's observation seems to be true in a general sense, probably due to the many sensory system properties we share with other animals."

Other co-authors were Sarah Woolley and Jon Sakata of McGill University and Courtney Hilton of Yale and the University of Melbourne.

Additional images, videos and sounds are available for download here: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/ot7suzb4zn6x9xv02clpr/AAYvK9FRkXswnDUCad7IRCA?rlkey=6to2ndqph5y0adyrkfbif2ris&st=tmea6v7y&dl=0