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Sexual Selection and Singing Animals (and Singing Hominids)
Sexual selection freaturing singing animals goes back a long way. Male synchronous chorusing (which is not the same as entrainment) in non-human animals may have been the precursor to human entrainment and singing abilities. Such synchronous chorusing during mating season is found in some species of frogs and insects. It’s automatic and requires no cooperation among individuals. Human synchronous music-making, by contrast, is deliberate and requires true cooperation.
Isometric time-keeping and entrainment may have evolved for the same reason as music-making evolved in other species—sexual selection (to attract mates). Rhythmic singing and dancing would facilitate sexual selection: males display and females choose. The most co-ordinated and talented vocalists and dancers would become targets of female selection.
The capacity to do music originated with primitive calls in animals such as early hominids and evolved to the point where, today, people in all cultures are singing animals who create extraordinarily sophisticated music. This mode of evolutionary adaptation indicates a sexually selected arms race between, as the evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller puts it, “unfulfillable sexual demands and irresistible sexual displays.” The great British geneticist and statistician, R. A. Fisher, developed the theory of “runaway sexual selection” to describe how this happens. He cited the peacock’s fan as a classic example. It’s a flashy trait that signals a high-functioning male.