Humans share acoustic preferences with other animals

Many animals produce sounds during courtship, and receivers prefer some sounds over others. Shared ancestry and convergent evolution may generate similarities in preference across species and could underlie Darwin’s conjecture that some animals “have nearly the same taste for the beautiful as we have”. Here, we experimentally demonstrate that humans share acoustic preferences with a wide range of animals, that the strength of human preferences correlates with that in other animals, and that judgments are faster when in agreement with animals. Furthermore, we found evidence that music listening experience predicted agreement with animals. These results are consistent with theories arguing that biases in sensory and cognitive processing sculpt acoustic preferences and confirm Darwin’s century-old hunch about the conservation of aesthetics and beauty in nature.