Studies show that bird song contributes to people's sense of well-being and relaxation in nature. What makes some songs seem more pleasant to us than others? A team of scientists from the University of Tübingen, in Germany, decided to investigate this question.
The researchers asked a group of people to listen to the songs of 123 species of wild birds and to classify how pleasant they were. The results revealed that participants preferred complex and higher-pitched songs, as long as they were not too high.
The songs of blackbirds were considered the most pleasant, while those of barn owls were at the bottom of the list as the least pleasant. This difference may be related to the acoustic characteristics of each species.
The participants' ratings were not affected by geographical or cultural context, which suggests that human preference for certain bird songs may have universal biological roots.
