Consonant tone combinations occur naturally in the overtone series of harmonic sounds. These include sounds that many non-human animals produce to communicate. As such, non-human animals may be attracted to consonant intervals, interpreting them, e.g., as a feature of important social stimuli. There is preliminary evidence of attraction to consonance in various bird species in the wild, but few experimental studies with birds. We tested budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulatus) for attraction to consonant over dissonant intervals in two experiments. In Experiment 1, we tested humans and budgerigars using a place preference paradigm in which individuals could explore an environment with multiple sound sources. Both species were tested with consonant and dissonant versions of a previously studied piano melody, and we recorded time spent with each stimulus as a measure of attraction. Human females spent more time with consonant than dissonant stimuli in this experiment, but human males spent equal time with both consonant and dissonant stimuli. Neither male nor female budgerigars spent more time with either stimulus type. In Experiment 2, we tested budgerigars with more ecologically relevant stimuli comprised of sampled budgerigar vocalizations arranged into consonant or dissonant chords. These stimuli, however, also failed to produce any evidence of preference in budgerigar responses. We discuss these results in the context of ongoing research on the study of consonance as a potential general feature of auditory perception in animals with harmonic vocalizations, with respect to similarities and differences between human and budgerigar vocal behaviour, and future methodological directions.

中文翻译：

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谐音对虎皮鹦鹉有吸引力吗？没有地方偏好研究的证据。

辅音组合自然会出现在泛音系列的泛音中。其中包括许多非人类动物发出的声音来进行交流。这样，非人类动物可能被吸引到辅音区间，例如将其解释为重要的社会刺激的特征。在野外，各种鸟类都有谐音吸引的初步证据，但很少有鸟类进行实验研究。我们测试了虎皮鹦鹉（Melopsittacus undulatus），以在两个实验中在非谐间隔内吸引辅音。在实验1中，我们使用位置偏好范式测试了人类和虎皮鹦鹉，在该范式中个人可以探索具有多种声源的环境。两种物种都经过了先前研究过的钢琴旋律的辅音和不谐音版本的测试，我们记录了每种刺激所花费的时间以衡量吸引力。在此实验中，人类女性在辅音上花费的时间多于非谐音刺激，但是男性在辅音和谐音刺激上的花费时间相同。雄性和雌性虎皮鹦鹉都没有花费更多的时间来刺激两种类型。在实验2中，我们测试了虎皮鹦鹉具有更多与生态相关的刺激因素，这些刺激包括采样的虎皮鹦鹉发声排列成辅音或不谐音和弦。但是，这些刺激 也没有产生任何关于虎皮鹦鹉反应偏好的证据。我们在正在进行的研究中对这些结果进行讨论，这些研究是关于谐音研究的结果，即谐音作为动物的听觉感知的潜在一般特征，涉及人与虎皮鹦鹉声乐行为之间的异同以及未来的方法论方向。