Hermit Thrush or Humans - who sets the tone?

The songs of the hermit thrush, a common North American songbird, follow principles found in much human music - namely the harmonic series. Researchers from the University of Vienna, Austria, the Cornish College of the Arts, USA, and the Philipps University of Marburg, Germany, are the first to demonstrate note selection from the harmonic series in a non-human animal using rigorous analytical methods. The results are particularly relevant to the ongoing nature/nurture debate about whether musical traits such as the preference for consonant intervals are biologically or culturally driven. Many musical cultures around the world use pitch systems in which notes are related by simple integer proportions (ratios between note frequencies) corresponding to the harmonic (overtone) series. The diatonic major scale, prevalent in Western music, is a typical example. For a long time, scientists have debated the relative contribution of biology and culture in shaping these pitch systems. One way to answer this question is to study animal "song": if the vocal displays of some animals, such as birds or whales, follow some of the same principles that characterize human musical systems, this might suggest a biological basis for these musical systems.