A bird listening to birdsong may experience some of the same
emotions as a human listening to music, suggests a new study on white-throated
sparrows, published in Frontiers of Evolutionary Neuroscience.
“We found that the same neural reward system is activated in
female birds in the breeding state that are listening to male birdsong, and in
people listening to music that they like,” says Sarah Earp, who led the
research as an undergraduate at Emory University.