Why don’t cockatoos have war songs?
Published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2021
Recommended citation: Moser, C., Ackerman, J., Dayer, A., Proksch, S., & Smaldino, P. E. (2021). Why don’t cockatoos have war songs? [commentary on Mehr et al. and Savage et al.]. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 44. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brain-sciences/article/abs/why-dont-cockatoos-have-war-songs/C16439F0B3AA0E5601E74DDFDBCDC175
We suggest that the accounts offered by the target articles could be strengthened by acknowledging the role of group selection and cultural niche construction in shaping the evolutionary trajectory of human music. We argue that group level traits and highly variable cultural niches can explain the diversity of human song, but the target articles’ accounts are insufficient to explain such diversity.