Lots of non-human animals make sounds that we humans consider musical. There’s even a whole scientific field dedicated to studying this idea: zoomusicology. From frogs croaking through the night to whales singing in the deep, animal musicians surround us. Not all these sounds are pleasant to our ears (cicadas, for example, can cause hearing damage at close range), but it’s hard not to appreciate how our world is alive with complex and astonishing sounds.
To the cynic, these sounds may just be the noises animals make. But there’s a lot more to animal calls than simply taking a deep breath and screaming as loud as they can. Some members of the animal kingdom play their whole bodies like an instrument. What’s more, some create sounds we would need a machine to make.
So, to highlight and celebrate some of this incredible musical diversity, we’ve made up a list of 7 animal musicians for your appreciation. Some you may be familiar with, others less so. And some make music that feels almost orchestral.
7 of Mother Nature’s Most Incredible Animal Musicians
Elephants
Providing the bass for our animal orchestra is the elephant. While perhaps best known for their loud trumpeting, elephants also create a bass so low we can’t even hear it. This “infrasound” is of such a deep bass that it literally vibrates the ground and can travel up to six miles – or more. What message is communicated in these deep tones is not fully understood. However, we know that female elephants often create infrasounds during mating season, attracting male attention.
Elephants “hear” these infrasound messages in two ways: through the bones in their legs, which transmit the vibrations up and into their inner ears, or with the nerves in pads on the undersides of their feet. Elephants have even been seen pressing their trunks into the ground and lifting one foot up on their toes, possibly to hear the message more clearly.
Bats
Bats are the sopranos of our beast band. It was once widely believed that bats made sounds for only two reasons: echolocation and identifying their young in colonies. Now, however, we know bats are incredibly social creatures, and their voice is an important part of their social lives. Some species guard their territories and court mates with songs far too high-pitched for humans to hear.
This area of research is only now being explored, and very few of the 1200 bat species have been studied. However, researchers have recorded white-lined, sac-winged, and Brazilian free-tailed bats singing to their mates. These songs are two to four times higher than the hearing range of a human being, but when slowed low and lowered in pitch, they sound somewhat like chirping songbirds.
Mosquito
When looking to our animal musicians for duettists, we come to a surprising choice: mosquitoes. But can the sounds they make be considered music? It’s true the sound of a mosquito’s wings can be irritating to us, but it’s the world’s greatest love song to another mosquito! The wings of female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes hum at 400 hertz. Males of the same species hum at 600 hertz. But, when they meet, they adjust the patterns of their wing beats until they match. That’s right! Those annoying little bloodsuckers have an ear for intervals!
Woodpecker
Who better to join our ensemble on the drums than the woodpecker? With an extra-thick beak, reinforced skull, and powerful neck muscles. woodpeckers are specifically designed to peck at wood for hours a day without injuring themselves. They don’t have complex songs to attract mates – they don’t even chirp. So, instead, they use what they’ve got: the ability to turn trees into drums.
Aside from excavating for food to build nests, woodpeckers bang on hollow tree trunks in patterns unique to each species. These patterns are used (you guessed it) to both ward off intruders and attract mates. Both male and female woodpeckers participate in this pastime, and in urban areas, they like to drum on houses, rain gutters, and lamp posts.
Club-Winged Manakin
We turn to another bird for our string section, but these animal musicians may surprise you! Manakins are a whole family of small, colourful birds native to Central and South America. Every male member of the group performs a display for the females, known as “lekking.” But the club-winged variety of manakin does this a little differently from the rest. Instead of strutting or singing, these birds play their feathers like a stringed instrument!
The club-winged manakin is named so because of their strange feathers. Their wings include a club-shaped “scraper” and a ridged “comb.” When a male club-winged manakin vibrates its wings (faster than even a hummingbird!), the scraper rubs against the comb. That action vibrates all the bird’s primary feathers and creates a sound not unlike a violin. This bird has even evolved solid bones in its wings, unlike the hollow bones of most birds, for an improved tone.
Anna’s Hummingbird
Another bird that uses its feathers to create a musical tone is Anna’s hummingbird, this time making something akin to the sound of a woodwind.
When it comes to mating displays, hummingbirds are jacks of all trades. Males show off iridescent feathers, sing complex sounds, and perform daredevil maneuvers for their female audience. Often, all of these tactics are on full display at once. But one species, Anna’s hummingbirds, adds one final element to the mix: they create a loud whistle or squeak when they dive. But this whistle isn’t created by their voice. Instead, it’s made by the bird’s unique tail! Specialized feathers on the outer edges of the hummingbird’s tail catch high-speed winds. They vibrate and produce a brilliant, shrill punctuation to the bird’s aerial displays.
Elk
Finally, we come to the brass section, represented among animal musicians by the elk. We humans are nearly unique in the animal kingdom when it comes to our voices. We have a “descended” larynx; our voice box is low among earthly creatures and lies low in the throat. The only other land animals to have this unique larynx are elk and red deer. What’s more, their voice boxes are even lower than ours, descending all the way down into their chest! This makes the bugle-like calls of the males even louder and lower than our voices can produce. That makes them sound much larger than they truly are.
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