Dr. Jennifer Groh

And then that kind of concerted working together as a group, and you could sort of see that, like, once you had the basics of, like—

And here I'm talking when I say, once you have, I'm really imagining on an evolutionary scale that for anything to come about and endure requires that it increase our fitness at every stage of the way.

So initially you might get that rhythm thing going on, but then that would be satisfying to people.

Like if you had a mutation that made acting together

feel good for some reason.

And then it would come along with this benefit of competing with the hyenas for the lion kill.

And then it would kind of potentially feed on itself of like, well, even more cooperative action, feeling good together allows us to then do other things together that we can't do individually.

Yeah.

They're united.

I think it's definitely a vigor display.

And it's even in our language, isn't it?

So-and-so didn't blink.

Right.

Well, and the other thing is that music plays a role in, say, the military and in war.

I read somewhere that the military is the largest employer of musicians in this country.

Yeah.

Well, you know, I thought it was a surprise to me when I first heard it.

Right.

So, and I think the other, you know, possible angle for all of this is, you know, there are things in many species that are not obviously beneficial.

Take the peacock, for example, that enormous investment in plumage and very colorful tail feathers is not something that is directly adding to the survival skills of the male peacock, but rather it's something the female peacocks like.