The hermit thrush sings in a five-tone scale common in Asian music. Whales, descendants of land-based mammals that diverged from the line that scientists say led to humans 60 million years ago, are also accomplished musicans. For example, a humpback whale song typically consists of an opening theme, a section in which the theme is elaborated, and then a return to the original theme. Since anthropologists have determined that Neanderthals lacked the vocal organs necessary for human speech, the flute indicates that music must be older than human language. Like people, animals learn music from one another.
Birds copy each other's songs.
All the humpback whales in a single breeding area hum the same tune. Michael Noad, a whale expert at the University of Sydney in Australia, recently discovered a remarkable demonstration of musical learning in animals. Two years after a few humpback whales moved from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, the resident Pacific whales abandoned their own song in favor of the newcomers' melody, Noad reported in the journal Nature. Human composers have also copied from birds.