The animals were familiarized with an excerpt of the “Happy Birthday” song, using the timbre of an acoustic piano.
In the paper “ Detecting surface changes in a familiar tune: exploring pitch, tempo and timbre”, published in the journal Animal Cognition in February 2022, the researchers from Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Spain), Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (Spain) and Aarhus University (Denmark) explain that, to carry out the study, they used a sample of 40 female rats aging 5-month-old. Have you noticed that at birthday parties, the “Happy Birthday” song is sung by different people (with different individual voices) in different frequency ranges and at a randomly chosen speed (slower or faster rhythm)? And that, despite this, all the participants in the party are able to recognize the song, even those who only know the lyrics in another language? This happens because we identify a musical excerpt as an object that can flexibly vary in at least three dimensions (pitch, tempo and timbre) without losing its identity.īut to what extent does the biological predisposition of humans to process music emerge from sensitivities already present in non-human animals? With the support of the BIAL Foundation, researchers Paola Crespo-Bojorque, Alexandre Celma-Miralles and Juan Toro joined forces to explore whether a distant non-vocal learner species, the Long-Evans rat (Rattus norvegicus), would be able to detect surface changes in a familiar tune.
Are humans the only ones who recognize musical melodies, whether they are played on different instruments, frequencies and tempos? Study reveals that rats showed sensitivity to track harmonic and temporal patterns in music and such sensitivities might be shared across species.