Humans are known to be higher species than animals given their ability to think than their instincts and create things. But over the years, animals have proven that they can also make an artwork of their own. An example of that is the snake in the Alabama Gulf Coast Zoo that made a slithering piece of artwork.

Other animals known for their artistic sides include apes, cetaceans, elephants, bowerbirds, and reptiles among others. Although they are mostly guided and were not spontaneously created, some animals are known to have created masterpieces in nature.

Can Animals Appreciate Art? Snake Creates A Piece of Artwork That Will Be Put on Auction At Alabama Gulf Coast Zoo
(Photo : Pixabay/Shilona)
Can Animals Appreciate Art? Snake Creates A Piece of Artwork That Will Be Put on Auction At Alabama Gulf Coast Zoo

The Art of the Slithering Snake

In more recent news about animals creating art, Fox 10 News reported that the Alabama Gulf Coast Zoo's red-tailed boa named Perdido created an amazing piece of artwork. A video of the snake shows it slithering across the canvas and creating its masterpiece.

The zoo is holding an auction from March 21 to 26 during their Art on the Wild Side fundraiser project that would showcase original works of art from other zoo animal artists. It aims to raise funds to continue supporting its mission of creating compelling experiences that connect people and the wildlife to inspire personal responsibility to help conserve the natural world.

Animals Doing Art

It has long been established that beyond a reasonable doubt, humans cannot claim to be the only creative species. Animals regularly change based on the environmental and societal changes that lead them to develop new patterns of behavior to adapt to new circumstances. That is, they become creative in their way.

But do they make art in nature like how humans produce art in various forms? According to an article in Art Radar Journal, several animals have been documented creating art. For example, bowerbirds produce aesthetically pleasing works that both birds and humans admire.

William Wegman, a famous American artist best known for his art involving dogs, said that animals can perceive objects to determine whether it looks aesthetically pleasing to them or not.

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Do Animals Perceive Art?

Researchers have been studying animals and their relationship with art. A team of psychologists from Keio University in Tokyo published a study in 1995, titled "Pigeons' discrimination of paintings by Monet and Picasso," in the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior that showed pigeons can be trained to determine which of the paintings were made by Claude Monet and which are paintings of Pablo Picasso.

Study lead author Shigeru Watanabe said that appreciation of art has two aspects - discrimination (perception) and reinforcing property (feeling of pleasure). Watanabe said that animals demonstrated a capacity for the former because they can be trained, but are not good at the latter. Although his later study in Java sparrows showed some signs of animals experiencing a pleasurable feeling from art.

Even koi fish were tested in 2001 to see if they were capable of distinguishing the music of John Lee Hooker and Johan Sebastian Bach. Years later, goldfish have even accomplished a more complex task of identifying Bach and Igor Stravinsky in which they correctly identified which music was created by an artist 75% of the cases.

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