What animal are you? Humans and animals tend to like the same mating calls

"Participants were asked to listen to dozens of pairs of mating calls from 16 animal species, including mammals, birds, frogs and insects, and then were asked to select which call they liked more. On average, humans tended to prefer the same mating calls that animals themselves did."

"I was pretty shocked to be honest, says lead study author Logan James, a postdoctoral fellow at McGill University and a visiting scholar at the University of Texas at Austin. We designed this, we were excited about it, and we had reasons to believe that it could be true, he adds. But I really didn't know if it was going to pan out."

"Overall, we found that people really were more likely than chance to pick the same sound that the animals tended to prefer in the previous research, James says. That alone was really quite striking to us."

A study involving over 4,000 participants examined whether humans and animals share preferences for mating calls across 16 species including mammals, birds, frogs, and insects. Participants listened to pairs of mating calls and selected their preferences. Results showed humans selected the same mating calls that animals themselves preferred at rates significantly better than chance. Lead researcher Logan James expressed surprise at the findings, noting the results were striking and unexpected. The study compared human selections to animals' documented preferences from previous research, revealing an unexpected alignment between human and animal acoustic preferences that challenges previous scientific assumptions about human perception of animal sounds.

Read at www.scientificamerican.com