If you don’t know how to express your feelings, music can help you. Not without reason, the famous
scientist Charles Darwin, having listened to bird songs, put forward the theory that the human race
needs music for sexual selection.
In the animal kingdom, animals show off with a terrible force, using a variety of tricks to impress potential partners. Mating songs are an important part of their arsenal.
Science still doesn’t know for sure if Darwin was right, like even betting experts cannot be 100% sure that your Football bets in Mozambique will bring profit.
Let’s find out the most unusual animal mating rituals associated with music, and compare them with the behavior of humans, for whom, since ancient times, ballads about love helped arrange their personal lives.
In the Rhythm of the Rock Hyrax
Take a close look at the rock hyrax. This animal looks like an overgrown hamster. In reality, it’s the elephant’s closest relative. It’s hard to say what heights of sinew their ancestors conquered to evolve into this. But that’s not what we’re interested in.
These gregarious social animals are born singers. Admittedly, simply serenading them isn’t enough to attract female admirers. Females organize “Voice” for damsels, evaluating the rhythm and quality of
performance.
As a result, the furry beauty is taken by the one who sings best. After all, it’s a sign of
powerful health and good genetics. Scientists have concluded that damsels who sing more often and better withstand the rhythm, produce more offspring. Listen for yourself to what their musical numbers sound like. Surprisingly, it doesn’tsound like blat chanson at all.
They’re like hiccuping birds! Just get your wives away from the screens to save them from the temptation to swap you for a damsel.
The Creative Corixidae
You’re probably starting to realize by now that music is the ultimate instrument of love. If you leave out the procreative organs, of course. However, the corixidae can’t stand anything and combines pleasantness and usefulness.
When the two-millimeter crumb sits underwater and rubs his manhood on the ribbed abdomen, the lake shudders. Swimming by fish may inadvertently think that somewhere near the sinking of the “Titanic” and about to come to the destruction of the gods.
In reality, the little corixidae just wants love. Its ingenuous actions give birth to a ballad designed to
attract females. It’s a noisy ballad: relative to its size, the rowboat is the loudest animal on the planet.
Its musical performances reach 99.2 decibels, which is quite the same as the roar of a freight train.
Entomologists call this method of “dragging.” The corixidae calls it “classy evening.” Most
importantly, don’t try it again: your parents won’t appreciate it if they catch you doing it.
The Sad Story of the Regent Honeyeater
The tragedy of these birds isn’t only in their rather offensive names. You’d think they were some kind of monster covered in warts and smeared with honey. In reality, they look quite decent, unlike the same royal vulture.
The real trouble isn’t even that there are only about 300 honeyeaters left in the entire world. The problem is that they are gradually forgetting their mating songs. For them, life without music isn’t just like death; it’s death.
In the old days, honeyeaters were famous for their elaborate serenades. But now their culture is
disappearing. In the parental nest, the chicks have no time to practice vocals — they don’t want to
invite all the predators in the neighborhood to their father’s home.
When they leave the parental nest, it turns out that there is no one to teach them traditional songs: there is no one to teach them. In desperation, the honeyeaters began to imitate and sing the trills of birds of other species.
But you can’t fool women: if you go to a Beyoncé concert and there’s a cover band playing Cannibal Corpse hits, few people will be tempted. So the honey suckers are on the verge of extinction as a species.
Australian scientists don’t lose hope of saving the situation and are trying to breed honeycreepers in
captivity. The birds aren’t released into the world until they are trained in a “music school,” having
listened to the songs of wild honey bees kept in a neighboring enclosure.
The Grisly Fate of the Corn Borer
You know how people rub their hands together slyly when they’re up to no good? Asian corn borers do something similar: they rub the scales on their wings against the scales on their thorax, but with much more serious consequences. The result is an imitative song similar to the ultrasonic signals bats use to echolocate. When female fireflies hear these sounds, they literally freeze because bats tend to dine on them. Male borers seize the moment and become intimate with their paralyzed soulmates at this very moment.
Mercantile Musical Frogs
Male Chinese Babina daunchina frogs dig small burrows at the edge of ponds where their chosen females could lay their eggs. To lure the girls, kwakuns perform love serenades. And they sing them both from their apartments, and outside them. More than 70% preferred songs coming from the
apartment.
By the sound of the songs, they could determine the quality of material assets, like the depth and quality of the mink. In other words, the chances of reproduction are higher for frog rappers
who flaunt wealth and real estate in their songs.
