The best and most delightful news you’ll read today is the fact that sharks can chill out to jazz.
Mashable reports that researchers from Australia’s Macquairie University have demonstrated that sharks have a complex ear, being able to differentiate between different types of music. The study used baby sharks that were trained to associate music with food. The scientists would play jazz for the animals and they would swim towards their feeding station.
Sound has always been a big deal for aquatic animals, which is used to lead them to food and helping them avoid obstacles and other objects.While some animals, like dolphins, have particularly layered hearing, sharks’ capabilities have been less studied. Still, hearing is very important for them because they’re capable of listening to sound frequencies from 90 to 250 meters away.
This newest study consisted of playing different types of music on different stations, with jazz being the one where sharks get their food. While the experiment wasn’t a total success, 5 out of 8 sharks were able to recognize jazz and associate it with their food. If researchers played classical music then the sharks would simply get confused.
-
Related Story: There’s A Beetle Species Named After Leonardo DiCaprio
It was obvious that the sharks knew that they had to do something when the classical music was played, but they couldn’t figure out that they had to go to a different location”
While sharks have always been perceived as simple animals, this study proves that there’s a lot more going on, and that maybe they’re smarter than what we give them credit for. They also like jazz, which is weirdly fitting.
