"The origin of human music has long been the subject of intense discussion between philosophers, cultural scientists and naturalists. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen, Germany and Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, US, have now found striking parallels between our music and the song of a small brown bird living in the Amazon region. The Musician Wren favors consonant over dissonant intervals, something that has rarely been observed in other animal species before. This bird's musicality goes even further: it prefers to sing perfect consonances (octaves, perfect fifths, and perfect fourths) over imperfect consonances leading to some passages which may sound to human listeners as if they are structured around a tonal center. The Musician Wren (Cyphorhynus arada) is aptly-named, because these birds use the same intervals in their songs that are heard as consonant in many human cultures. This is what composer and musicologist Emily Doolittle and the biologist Henrik Brumm found out in their zoomusicological study. Consonant intervals are perceived to fit well together." - Amira

"They sound calm and stable, and are the basis for keys in Western Music. It is because Musician Wrens preferentially produce successive perfect octaves, fifths, and fourths that their songs sound musical to human listeners. In fact the researchers found passages in the songs of the Musician Wrens with striking similarity to passages of e.g. the composers Bach and Haydn. (...) "Our findings explain why this bird species plays such a prominent role in mythology and art. However, it does not mean that birdsong in general is constructed like human music – there are around 4000 different song bird species and each has its own way of singing. Some are not very musical at all," says Henrik Brumm, research group leader in Seewiesen. It remains mysterious whether and how musician wrens perceive musical intervals and how they think about structuring their songs, though this would be an excellent subject for further study. The perception of intervals and other aspects of human music by non-human animals are of considerable relevance with regards to the origin of human music." - Amira