Zoomusicology

Zoomusicology is a field of musicology and zoology or more specifically, zoosemiotics. Zoomusicology is the study of the music of animals, animal music or rather the musical aspects of sound or communication produced and received by animals.

Zoomusicology may be distinguished from ethnomusicology, the study of human music.

John Blacking defines animal music as, "sounds produced by other species that we can hear as organized," while Kathleen Higgins adds that humans must also be able to empathize with these sounds. Zoomusicologist Dario Martinelli describes the subject of zoomusicology as the, "aesthetic use of sound communication among animals." George Herzog (1941) asked, "do animals have music?" François-Bernard Mâche's Musique, mythe, nature, ou les Dauphins d'Arion (1983), includes a study of "ornitho-musicology" using a technique of Nicolas Ruwet's Langage, musique, poésie (1972),paradigmatic segmentation analysis, shows that bird songs are organized according to a repetition-transformation principle. One purpose of the book was to "begin to speak of animal musics other than with the quotation marks", and he is credited by Dario Martinelli with the creation of zoomusicology.

Musicologist Marcello Sorce Keller attributes musical qualities to animal sounds, specifically whales' and birds' songs, by stating that regional variations can be found that resemble cultural traits in human music. He advocates for a combined study of zoomusicology and ethnomusicology with the remark that he, "would like to suggest that musical scholarship excluding non-human animals cannot ultimately describe 'how musical is man [sic]'."

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