Do Animals Posess A Sense of Beauty?

It was Stendahl who defined "Beauty as the Promise of Happiness". And Robinson Jeffers who wrote:


"Or as mathematics, a human invention

That parallels but never touches reality, gives the astronomer

Metaphors through which he may comprehend

That powers and the flow of things: so the human sense

Of beauty is our metaphor of their excellence, their divine

nature:-like dust in a whirlwind, making

The wild wind visible."


So I far as I know there has not been a lot of studies on chimps, dogs, or song birds to determine if they possess, like man, a sense of beauty.

I have in mind experiments in which animals are exposed to human music, either voice or instrumental, and their reaction are measured in some manner. Or ones that make changes to the physical environment of the subjects - using color, size, and shapes as well.

(The research emphasis of neuroscience is always on cognition to the exclusion of other mental capacities.)



There are many studies that indicate that song birds have preferences for complex songs - if one considers that complexity is indicating "beauty". For example:


Catchpole, C. K., and Slater, P. L. B. (1995). Bird song: themes and variations (Cambridge University Press, New York).


And one that is comparing musical perception of humans and monkeys:


McDermott, J., and Hauser, M. D. (2004). "Are consonant intervals music to their ears? Spontaneous acoustic preferences in a nonhuman primate," Cognition 94, B11-B21.


So, I think the question that I posed still remains unanswered.