tantalus

1) We, like howling wolves and coyotes, are nomadic pack hunters - so are hyenas, famous for vocalizing, and pack hunting whales or dolphins, famous for vocalizing. Pack foraging mammals howl and sing, in general - even marsupials, such as Tasmanian Devils. We are the only nomadic pack hunting primate - if there is going to be a pack howling primate, we're the most likely candidate.

 

2) Many primates and similar creatures put great emphasis on vocalizing in a variety of contexts (howler monkees are named for it, lemurs in general are elaborately vocal, etc). Several of them, like humans, have special larynx and throat structures to abet their vocalizing.

 

But the point was not that we are like wolves; it was that there are well known roles for apparently "useless" singing etc in relevant natural and evolutionary contexts. They may not be the right or sole or most significant explanations in our case, but they are obvious possibilities - to say the whole situation is completely mysterious and without apparent possible explanation is to overlook some plain and standard stuff.

Originally posted by Overtone

Of course. But one does not expect such phenomena to emerge wholly from nothing in particular and take over an entire global species as universally and ubiquitously and significantly as music has humans. If we adopt music so flexibly and casually, as an empiphenomenon, for no particular reason or benefit, how come we always, everywhere adopt it, and at such a basic level of social functioning, and at such expense in time and effort and attention?

Emerge wholly from nothing, no, never from nothing, I never suggested that. Non-adaptive has a source as much as adaptive.

An entire global species, we weren't always that way, we have our own narrow origin, in geography and time (bottlenecks), universality for anything in humanity isn't surprising with that in mind.

Music has exploded with aid of civilisation, culture and technology. There is no mystery there, even if there was a completely adaptive origin proven and accepted, the modern state of music would still be completely disproportionate in "time and effort and attention" from its past adaptive function, many of us have all the luxury in the world to enjoy our modern inventions. In other words, because we like it.

 

To paraphrase Robbie Robertson's account of how he was persuaded as a young man to dump his schooling and job prospects and family and all sensible future prospects to join the rock and roll group called "The Band": 'the manager said I'd have a great time on tour with the guys, and I'd get more pussy than Frank Sinatra.'

I don't see the wolf comparison as being especially instructive. Obviously sound and individual recognition are important in coordination and bonding in many species, sexual selection and song in the birds, that doesn't prove anything except that they should be considered. That said, the more I think about it, the more I think your 2 proposals are valid possibilities, especially as it isnt clear regarding the evolution of language. Music and its predecessors may have been even more important in a world with a small vocabulary, although one would think we might be seeing something in the other primates but I have never heard of anything equivalent to our fondness to music in their behaviour. It appears that there has been a relatively rapid burst in evolution regarding music, surely linked to the expansion of our brain. The other primates have "passed" on it and that is why I dont think the wolf example is especially meaningful.

Most importantly I think is your point about explanations not being mutually exclusive.

That said, our brains give us much more flexibility in dealing with our environment, most importantly with each other, with that, we should expect that a wide range of phenomena emerges with no adaptive purpose or a weak one, as a result of that great flexibility, which on balance produces a fitness gain. Of course I am massively oversimplifying and treating the brain as a single unit for selection to act upon, I understand that there is nothing further from the truth than that, but the strong possibility should be considered that other more powerful adaptive functions of the brain have provided the majority or even all of the fitness gain and that they also are useful in appreciating music, which could almost be considered a discovery. or, it could be one or more theories, including your two, helped channel in part what was mostly a non-adaptive phenomenon.

http://science.time.com/2013/04/15/music/

http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/04/11/why-does-music-feel-so-good/

http://www.livescience.com/32473-why-do-we-love-music.html

Interesting research, but the OP appears to be more focused on the potentially adaptive explanations for why we love music and those links are limited in helping us understand and generate plausible theories about the adaptive function of music.

There are at least two currently observable roles of human music that provide evolutionary advantage in other animals:

 

sexual selection (for health and vigor, obviously, but also in humans and some birds etc for intelligence and capability);

 

and social bonding, pack formation (wolves famously, but hyenas and whales and probably many other mammals also).

 

Something to note - it's standard and expected for the features playing such roles in a social animal to be "useless" otherwise. It's very important, for example, that the social bonds be made and maintained well in advance and outside of anything of consequence depending on them. It's too late to start practicing being a coordinated group of known and reliable buddies when the tiger appears or the tree trunk needs to be picked up, and as for sexual selection it often rides on features not merely useless but actually expensive and handicapping.

It's hard to imagine how there could have been a strong adaptive pressure in prehistory that allowed music to become a central human experience in regard to social bonding or sexual selection. Perhaps singing as a sexual selective trait, that eventually evolved into music via culture, utilizing the same biological mechanisms, but that doesn't appear especially intuitive and I have never heard of any authority proposing it.

Generation after generation of selection (natural or sexual) for music appreciation in the African savannah tens of thousands of years ago, It is hard to see it. It really is a fascinating dilemma. I remember reading a popular science writer, Steven Pinker, in How the Mind Works, and while he could provide solid and plausible theories for the adaptive function for a wide range of human emotions and cultural phenomena, he was able to offer little regarding music, and he freely admitted it.

It seems to me that the answer may very well rest away from a direct adaptive function, perhaps some form of a spandrel, a byproduct, a welcome one at that, from our complex mental machinery. Machinery, that is so flexible and useful in survival and reproduction, that all sorts of non-adaptive functions arise from it with no evolutionary justification required.

Greg

Sacrifice of one individuals reproduction enhances the survival of the species.

Individuals dont sacrifice themselves for a species, except perhaps humans, otherwise individuals that had such behaviour, would be outcompeted.

But worker ants simply don't have the ability to reproduce and therefore have no individual imperative to do so. So is it really altruism from their perspective

they are all related to each other. The point here is that it seems to be worth foregoing personal reproduction to help closely related siblings. Therefore, by helpings the nest, you are helping to pass on a share of your genes that your close relative has. This is one of the reasons for what appears to be altrustric behaviour. Obviously its normally better to reproduce yourself, as your most closley related to your children, but there are slight genetic variations regarding relatedness in ants that have helped shift the balance. However this is not the case in other social insects. Therefore it seems clear that environmental factors are also an issue, for example, that it would be very difficult for a single ant to go off and reproduce on its own, meaning it may be better to stay, dont reproduce and help the nest, so that closely related ants can help pass on genes which are shared with the worker. Its those genes that are the payoff, not very altruistic....