Bird and whale song are a way for males to attract members of the opposite sex, and (as the variety of bird calls you might hear out in the garden indicates) these songs vary between species. Similar to how people can have different tastes in music, there is also variation in the the style of the songs between individuals of the same species. This can lead to ‘cultural revolutions’ where some individuals can influence and change the mating calls of the other individuals in the population if they want to stay relevant.

This poses an interesting question of if and how animals value and appreciate aesthetic beauty and how similar that is to how humans view ‘aesthetic beauty’ – and of course implies that bird and whales must have some kind of Billboard 100 chart floating around!

The idea of cultural evolution in non-human animals is a growing topic of discussion but if you want to know more about how whale songs change check out the link below.

Read more: Global cultural evolutionary model of humpback whale song

Tanya Strydom is a PhD candidate at the Université de Montréal, mostly focusing on how we can use machine learning and artificial intelligence in ecology. Current research interests include (but are not limited to) predicting ecological networks, the role species traits and scale in ecological networks, general computer (and maths) geekiness, and a (seemingly) ever growing list of side projects. Tweets (sometimes related to actual science) can be found @TanyaS_08.