Animals, music, and communicating consciousness

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MeDotOrg
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Animals, music, and communicating consciousness

Post by MeDotOrg »

I have a weakness for YouTube videos where humans play music for animals. It started a couple of years ago with a man playing accordion for a heard of cows. For some reason I loved the almost surreal juxtaposition of the rather martial accordion music with the organic herd behavior of the cows.

Then there was a video of a blind elephant listening to classical piano in the jungle. The same pianist played for an agitated bull elephant, music to tame the savage beast.

I like a parrot who plays the lead on Sultans of Swing. Today I saw a woman play violin for whales. You could argue that humpback whale songs are as least as musical.

On land, sea and air, humans send out music and animals respond. Out of apes came man, and out of man came music. One of the biggest advantages humans have over apes and chimps is our highly developed ability to modulate vocally. Out of this comes speech, used to communicate abstract thought. Music is born out of the same physical ability, but animals react very differently to people talking and people playing music. The modulated sounds of music communicate no abstract thought. It is the assembly of a series of pleasing tones over space and time. And you don't have consciousness capable of abstract thought to get it.

Watching animals respond to music is crossing a bridge into the consciousness of the non-human world.
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Re: Animals, music, and communicating consciousness

Post by Kishkumen »

Cool stuff, MeDot!
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Re: Animals, music, and communicating consciousness

Post by Jersey Girl »

I have watched a TON of these kinds of videos particularly during the lock downs! Here's a couple more for the pile!

These are shorts...

Man sings Over the Rainbow to Donkey
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/VwXu4rdPlEA

Same song...same man

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/4pD_eqHX1nY


Same man...

Man cradles and sings to baby Donkey
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/lmB-3yb2ZXA

Same man, more recent, two Donkeys

Man Cradles Donkey to 'Over The Rainbow'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVvbta7gXRo


Tell me that doesn't make you want a Donkey!
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Re: Animals, music, and communicating consciousness

Post by Jersey Girl »

Different donkey. Different man.

Donkey Snuggles Into Guy's Shoulder Every Time He Plays Guitar | The Dodo Soulmates
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-R1gYh0o80
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Re: Animals, music, and communicating consciousness

Post by Some Schmo »

MeDotOrg wrote:
Sat Nov 05, 2022 6:55 am
Watching animals respond to music is crossing a bridge into the consciousness of the non-human world.
There's little doubt in my mind that animals (mammals, at the very least) have some kind of rudimentary consciousness (so I like that you're tacitly taking a similar position). I'm annoyed by the assumption by many that animals don't "think." Even if there's a chance they don't, we should assume they do. That's the moral position, I think. They can certainly suffer, and experience a wide range of emotions.

I'm of the firm opinion mammals are people too.
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Re: Animals, music, and communicating consciousness

Post by canpakes »

Some Schmo wrote:
Sat Nov 26, 2022 2:00 pm
There's little doubt in my mind that animals (mammals, at the very least) have some kind of rudimentary consciousness ...

Possibly even bees! From Scientific American -
Ball-rolling bumblebees have become the first known insects to “play,” researchers say. The scientists recorded these tiny fliers manipulating wooden balls again and again in a series of new experiments.

When animals repeatedly engage in behavior that does not provide them with food, shelter or another immediate benefit, researchers consider the behavior play. Play with inanimate objects is widely observed in animals, although most examples come from mammals and birds, with no record of the behavior in insects until now.

Animal play is one piece of the puzzle when determining whether a group of animals is sentient—whether its members have inner feelings and experiences. Scientists consider mammals, birds, and increasingly cephalopods and fish to be sentient beings. “Eventually, this can tell us something more about whether [insects] are sentient,” says Samadi Galpayage, a graduate student in Lars Chittka’s lab at Queen Mary University of London and lead author of the new bumblebee study, which was published on Thursday in Animal Behaviour.

In 2017 Chittka and other scientists taught bumblebees to roll balls in exchange for a sugary prize. To determine whether ball rolling could be a form of “play” in the new investigation, Galpayage, Chittka and their colleagues needed to take away the reward. First, they set up a system that let bumblebees move in an unobstructed path to a sucrose solution in a feeding area. Along the path’s sides, the researchers placed small wooden balls of varying colors, some fastened to the floor and some loose. Bees could access the sucrose without interacting with the balls at all.

Image

Over 54 hours, the team observed each of the experiment’s 45 bees contributing to 910 total ball-rolling actions. Some bees returned again and again, moving the balls in various patterns. The researchers found that feeding and ball-rolling activities happened at different times and frequencies, indicating that the bees had different motivations for the two actions. Younger bees and male bees were especially interested in rolling the balls.

In a later experiment, the scientists trained the bees to associate ball rolling with a certain chamber color. The bees then preferentially chose to enter that color chamber even when it was empty.

While these results illustrate play behavior in the bees, Galpayage says, the research does not show any motivations for it. Determining whether the insects are playing for pleasure, for instance, would require analyzing which neurotransmitters activate during ball rolling.

Olli Loukola, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Oulu in Finland, who led the ball-rolling study in 2017 and was not involved in the new work, also wonders about the behavior’s ultimate function. The interest in moving objects, he says, could be motivated by an “innate need to develop motor skills.”

Regardless of the play’s function, such studies can help researchers determine if a species is sentient, says Heather Browning, an animal welfare expert and philosopher at the University of Southampton in England.

“We don't have a good grasp yet on what the relationship is between sentience and different behaviors,” says Browning, who was also not involved in the study. Evidence for many different characteristics, such as play behavior, complex brain structure and learning ability “raise the probability of sentience.”

This study, Browning adds, “seems to be pointing in that direction.”
https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... /?amp=true
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Re: Animals, music, and communicating consciousness

Post by Gunnar »

Some Schmo wrote:
Sat Nov 26, 2022 2:00 pm
MeDotOrg wrote:
Sat Nov 05, 2022 6:55 am
Watching animals respond to music is crossing a bridge into the consciousness of the non-human world.
There's little doubt in my mind that animals (mammals, at the very least) have some kind of rudimentary consciousness (so I like that you're tacitly taking a similar position). I'm annoyed by the assumption by many that animals don't "think." Even if there's a chance they don't, we should assume they do. That's the moral position, I think. They can certainly suffer, and experience a wide range of emotions.

I'm of the firm opinion mammals are people too.
Not just mammals, in my opinion. Some species of birds are also remarkably intelligent, particularly parrots and corvids (crows, ravens and magpies etc.). Some of these in the parrot and corvid family can not only mimic human speech but understand it, and crows (particularly New Caledonian crows) not only use tools but also invent or modify their own tools from things they find in the wild for their own purposes. Their intelligence is estimated to be equivalent to that of an average 7-year-old human child. There are quite a few other YouTube videos documenting the remarkable intelligence and problem-solving skills of just crows.

In addition, some invertebrates such as Octopuses Are Ridiculously Smart. See also: The Insane Biology of: The Octopus
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Re: Animals, music, and communicating consciousness

Post by Gunnar »

MeDotOrg wrote:
Sat Nov 05, 2022 6:55 am
I like a parrot who plays the lead on Sultans of Swing. Today I saw a woman play violin for whales. You could argue that humpback whale songs are as least as musical.

Watching animals respond to music is crossing a bridge into the consciousness of the non-human world.
Speaking of humpback whale music, are you familiar with Alan Hovhaness' orchestral masterpiece, And God Created Great Whales[/i], into which he orchestrated recordings of the actual songs of humpback whales?
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Re: Animals, music, and communicating consciousness

Post by Gunnar »

canpakes wrote:
Sat Nov 26, 2022 4:41 pm
Some Schmo wrote:
Sat Nov 26, 2022 2:00 pm
There's little doubt in my mind that animals (mammals, at the very least) have some kind of rudimentary consciousness ...

Possibly even bees! From Scientific American -
Ball-rolling bumblebees have become the first known insects to “play,” researchers say. The scientists recorded these tiny fliers manipulating wooden balls again and again in a series of new experiments.

When animals repeatedly engage in behavior that does not provide them with food, shelter or another immediate benefit, researchers consider the behavior play. Play with inanimate objects is widely observed in animals, although most examples come from mammals and birds, with no record of the behavior in insects until now.

Animal play is one piece of the puzzle when determining whether a group of animals is sentient—whether its members have inner feelings and experiences. Scientists consider mammals, birds, and increasingly cephalopods and fish to be sentient beings. “Eventually, this can tell us something more about whether [insects] are sentient,” says Samadi Galpayage, a graduate student in Lars Chittka’s lab at Queen Mary University of London and lead author of the new bumblebee study, which was published on Thursday in Animal Behaviour.

In 2017 Chittka and other scientists taught bumblebees to roll balls in exchange for a sugary prize. To determine whether ball rolling could be a form of “play” in the new investigation, Galpayage, Chittka and their colleagues needed to take away the reward. First, they set up a system that let bumblebees move in an unobstructed path to a sucrose solution in a feeding area. Along the path’s sides, the researchers placed small wooden balls of varying colors, some fastened to the floor and some loose. Bees could access the sucrose without interacting with the balls at all.

Image

Over 54 hours, the team observed each of the experiment’s 45 bees contributing to 910 total ball-rolling actions. Some bees returned again and again, moving the balls in various patterns. The researchers found that feeding and ball-rolling activities happened at different times and frequencies, indicating that the bees had different motivations for the two actions. Younger bees and male bees were especially interested in rolling the balls.

In a later experiment, the scientists trained the bees to associate ball rolling with a certain chamber color. The bees then preferentially chose to enter that color chamber even when it was empty.

While these results illustrate play behavior in the bees, Galpayage says, the research does not show any motivations for it. Determining whether the insects are playing for pleasure, for instance, would require analyzing which neurotransmitters activate during ball rolling.

Olli Loukola, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Oulu in Finland, who led the ball-rolling study in 2017 and was not involved in the new work, also wonders about the behavior’s ultimate function. The interest in moving objects, he says, could be motivated by an “innate need to develop motor skills.”

Regardless of the play’s function, such studies can help researchers determine if a species is sentient, says Heather Browning, an animal welfare expert and philosopher at the University of Southampton in England.

“We don't have a good grasp yet on what the relationship is between sentience and different behaviors,” says Browning, who was also not involved in the study. Evidence for many different characteristics, such as play behavior, complex brain structure and learning ability “raise the probability of sentience.”

This study, Browning adds, “seems to be pointing in that direction.”
https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... /?amp=true
Wow! Even bees? This is the first I've heard of individual insects displaying play-like behavior! Fascinating! Thanks for sharing that with us!

I have read though of communities of social insects like beehives, ant colonies and termite nests acting together as if the community as a whole was somehow collectively sentient.
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Re: Animals, music, and communicating consciousness

Post by Some Schmo »

Gunnar wrote:
Sat Nov 26, 2022 7:04 pm
Some Schmo wrote:
Sat Nov 26, 2022 2:00 pm

There's little doubt in my mind that animals (mammals, at the very least) have some kind of rudimentary consciousness (so I like that you're tacitly taking a similar position). I'm annoyed by the assumption by many that animals don't "think." Even if there's a chance they don't, we should assume they do. That's the moral position, I think. They can certainly suffer, and experience a wide range of emotions.

I'm of the firm opinion mammals are people too.
Not just mammals, in my opinion. Some species of birds are also remarkably intelligent, particularly parrots and corvids (crows, ravens and magpies etc.). Some of these in the parrot and corvid family can not only mimic human speech but understand it, and crows (particularly New Caledonian crows) not only use tools but also invent or modify their own tools from things they find in the wild for their own purposes. Their intelligence is estimated to be equivalent to that of an average 7-year-old human child. There are quite a few other YouTube videos documenting the remarkable intelligence and problem-solving skills of just crows.

In addition, some invertebrates such as Octopuses Are Ridiculously Smart. See also: The Insane Biology of: The Octopus
I agree on all counts. I actually considered mentioning birds, but I wanted to be conservative in my claims to avoid clouding my point.

That bee study is pretty fascinating.
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