What mating call do YOU find most appealing? Take the test

"Researchers have found that humans and animals have remarkably similar tastes. The team, from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, wanted to know whether the features that make certain animal calls irresistible to females of the species would also be music to our human ears."

"Surprisingly, the results revealed that people tended to agree with animals a lot of the time. Humans seem to pick up on and enjoy the same features of mating calls as a wide range of animals, including birds, amphibians, primates, and even insects."

"The researchers found that the stronger a species' preference for a certain type of call, the more likely it was that a human would pick that call as their favourite. Humans were also faster to pick a sound as their favourite when the species had a stronger preference for one call over another."

Scientists from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute created an online quiz called 'Calls of the Wild' to test whether humans share similar acoustic preferences with animals. Over 4,000 participants worldwide listened to 16 pairs of mating calls from different species and voted for which sounded better. Results showed that humans consistently agreed with animal preferences across birds, amphibians, primates, and insects. The stronger a species' preference for a particular call type, the more likely humans were to select that same call as their favorite. Humans also responded faster when species showed stronger preferences, suggesting shared underlying principles in how both humans and animals evaluate acoustic signals.

Read at Mail Online