Some animals sing (birds, whales) and plenty of animals make sounds together at roughly the same time (wolves howling, prairie dogs yelling at threats). Are there animals that harmonize? Or animals that make sound that’s rhythmically coordinated, like has a time signature?
Guess I’m asking about more finely coordinated sounds. It’s something that’s pretty neat about human music.
I don’t know that it’s technically harmonization, but sometimes when wolves howl at the same time, they will each choose a different pitch. Presumably it’s so the group sounds like it has as many individuals as possible.
Or cause it’s fucking dope
Our dog loves to do that with the piano, it’s really cute.
If you match their pitch will they change it?
I believe birds have a very different perspective of harmonisation. What they sing might sound harmonised to them, but not to us (and vice versa).
Lol well birds are never going to make it big in the industry with that attitude (also I don’t think it really counts as harmonization if the notes don’t line up either. More like counterpoint or something)
With different hearing ranges for different species, their harmonies are probably different. It’s like watching one of those videos of what a cat hears vs what you hear vs what a dog hears. The ratios between the notes in the full range may be different, so what is pleasant may be different.
Even for humans there are different tunings starting at different base frequencies. So like, maybe you need bird ears to hear the perfect harmonies they produce. Tho, most of the animal kingdom when vocalizing are just screaming “Fuck me!”
You and the other commenter are right, I don’t expect birds to be like “let’s both chirp and make a minor third interval”. I’m sure if they harmonized it would be for whatever sounds right based on how they evolved and learned.
What I’m getting at is it’s not harmonizing if they just happen to be making sounds at the same time. For the purposes of my question harmonizing is when we’re intentionally making two distinct tones simultaneously.
So two birds that are just chirping along their individual songs and they happen to overlap so they each chirp complimentary notes isn’t what I’m interested in. I want to know if any animals mean to harmonize.
If it’s rained in the late afternoon then stops by nighttime, the frogs in the marshland across the street seem to synchronize their songs and get very very loud.
I’ve heard katydids do the same thing at night after very hot days.
Deer are talking to each other with slight clicks from their hooves.
I don’t know, but I guess that it has a certain rhythm, otherwise I could not imagine how it carries much information.
My first thought would be whales. No idea if they m correct though
Get every animal you can think of and make an orchestra out of them. It may not sound that amazing but it sure is a pretty cool idea.
Just be careful, some of them might feed on you. So… avoid those ones.
