In search of the origins of musicality?

This week, George Miller in the Hedgehog and the Fox investigates the origins of human musicality by looking for musical ability and perception in other animals, including rhesus macaques, zebra finches, a cockatoo named Snowball, and Ronan, a headbanging California sea lion. Miller's guide to the Evolving Animal Orchestra, is Henkjan Honing, professor of music cognition at the University of Amsterdam.



Honing’s book is not about the origins of music, but the structure of musicality, that collection of attributes that enable us to make and appreciate music, such as perception of a regular beat or the ability to imitate a melody. If such traits are based on our cognitive abilities and biological predispositions, it makes sense to look for them in other animals. All sorts of fascinating hypotheses then open up: if musicality is a sensitivity that humans share with many non-human species, it may have preceded the development of music and of language, but enabled both.