Universality of ”universals”: prevalence of common music patterns within bird songs

Despite the large variation in the acoustic structure of music around the world, there are numerous acoustic patterns that are more common than expected by chance (i.e., music “universals”). Given their prevalence, it is important to discern the factors that contribute to these patterns, and one possibility is that these universals reflect biological predispositions in vocal learning and production. Birds offer powerful opportunities to reveal the biological mechanisms underlying vocal patterning and performance, especially the contributions of vocal learning to the emergence of music universals. For this talk I will discuss the prevalence of music universals across hundreds of bird species, focusing on differences between vocal learning and non-learning species, and highlight the contribution of learning predispositions to the emergence of these patterns.