Science Identifies The Catchiest Songs Ever – Did Your Favorite Make The List?

Humans have a deeply rooted love for music and rhythm. For reasons we’ve yet to fully understand, certain types of music bring out the warrior inside of us while other types of music are incredibly soothing. Some songs move us to tears, yet others make us angry. And humans are not alone their capacity to respond to music. There is something about these unnaturally occurring sound patterns that speaks (sings?) to all species capable of sensing the reverberations.

Music can hold great power over us. Songs can change moods, spark memories, or inspire greatness. Some of you may have seen the video of Henry, an unresponsive gentleman in a nursing home, spring back to life after hearing his favorite music. Watch this remarkable episode below as neurologist Oliver Sacks explains the phenomenon.

We are also attuned to how divergent musical tastes can be! Teens rarely like the music that their parents listen to and vice versa. David Hasselhoff has an inexplicable legion of devoted fans in Germany. Michael Bolton somehow scored multiple hits despite piercing millions of eardrums. Some only listen to country, rap, rock, or classical, yet some people have promiscuous ears that love it all. And, let’s admit it, jazz is only fun for the musicians playing it.

Germans love the music of David Hasselhof so much that they've placed an eerily realistic wax statue of The Hoff by the Brandenburg Gate.

John Mellencamp once declared that the world is “polluted” with songs. With an estimated 2-5 billion songs having been written throughout human history, it is pretty remarkable for one to gain widespread popularity. The songs that manage to stand out from the crowd are typically called “earworms” because they are so catchy that you can’t shake them out of your head no matter how hard you try. Some of these tunes dig their talons so deeply into your subconscious that it can be agonizing; for example, here’s a list of infectious songs that were actually used to torture people.

Recently, Dr. John Ashley Burgoyne, who calls himself a computational musicologist, used an online game called “Hooked on Music” as a tool to identify some of the catchiest songs humans have ever concocted. Want to know what they are?

Coming in at number 5 is the ABBA hit, “SOS”:

The fourth catchiest song is “Just Dance” by Lady Gaga:

“Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor, the theme from Rocky III, punches in at #3:

One-hit wonder Lou Bega swings in at #2 with “Mambo No.5”:

And the catchiest song ever…(fake electronic drumroll)…“Wannabe” by the Spice Girls:

It should be noted that Burgoyne’s research relied on an internet game to generate the list of catchy songs, so there is inherent bias among the participants. Other research that employed a different algorithm (or should that be “algorhythm”?) have, perhaps thankfully, revealed different results.

All the fun aside, there is a serious element to researching why catchy songs are so easily remembered. The scientists involved with these types of studies hope that their work will reveal news insights into learning and memory, which could potentially be useful in treating conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease.

Contributed by:  Bill Sullivan

Follow Bill on Twitter.

Snowdon CT, & Teie D (2010). Affective responses in tamarins elicited by species-specific music. Biology letters, 6 (1), 30-2 PMID: 19726444

Might you like a water mite named after you?

It is estimated that nearly 9 million species share the Earth but only 2 million of them have been named. In scientific parlance, organisms are named using binomial nomenclature with the first word referring to the genus and the second word the species (e.g., humans = Homo sapiens). Typically, the scientists who discover the new species get the pleasure of naming it. Often, the species’ name refers to the location where it was found, or it refers to a peculiar trait the organism possesses. Or, it may simply be the music that was playing at the time of the discovery.

Famed singer/actress/dancer Jennifer Lopez provided the inspiration for the name of a newly discovered species of water mite found near Puerto Rico, Litarachna lopezae. Some have speculated that this is due to an uncanny resemblance between their posteriors, but the scientists claim that they were listening to her music while analyzing the mites (nothing like a little “Booty” piping through the lab to stimulate the intellectual rigor that goes into experimental design). But biologist Vladimiar Pesic, who made the discovery, contends, "The reason behind the unusual choice of name for the new species is simple: J Lo's songs and videos kept the team in a continuous good mood when writing the manuscript and watching World Cup Soccer 2014”.

Litarachna lopezae, also known as "L.Lo".
Why the extra “ae” at the end of “lopez”? To make it sound more science-y, of course.

In the scientific world, it is considered an honor to have a species named after you. Think about having your name forever linked to a beautiful flower or a majestic beast that rules the jungle – that would be pretty awesome. But as noted above, not all creatures are pleasant to look at or even possible to look at without a microscope. Some creatures make us sick or even kill us. Who’d want to be named after such a critter?

Well, President Barack Obama was the motivation behind the naming of Paragordius obamai, a newly described parasitic worm. I’m sure there are many people chomping at the bit to crack a joke about this, but the researchers claim that the name stems from the fact that they discovered the worm in Kenya, the native country of Obama’s father. There is also a trapdoor spider, Aptostichus barackobamai, named after our current president, presumably in recognition of his confessed love of Spiderman comics. Well on his way to having the most species named after him than any other president, Barack Obama’s namesake has also been used for a lichen (Caloplaca obamae) and an extinct lizard (Obamadon gracilis). Oh, and who can forget about the “Obamafish” (Etheostoma obama)?

A politician named after a worm. And not just any worm – a parasitic worm. Live bait for any comedian.

The names of other presidents and politicians have been adapted for binomial nomenclature, although surprisingly, no species of newt has been named after Newt Gingrich yet. George W. Bush, along with Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, all have a species of the Agathidium slime-mold beetle named after them (Agathidium bushi, A. cheneyi, and A. rumsfeldi). Both Teddy and Franklin D. Roosevelt, as well as Thomas Jefferson, have multiple species named after them. Clinton, Gore, and Carter have each been named after a species of Etheostoma (a genus of freshwater fish). And last but not least, George Washington served as the inspiration behind the name of Washingtonia, a genus of palm trees.

Let’s see if you can guess which celebrity is associated with the following species pictured below (answers at the bottom).



One

Two

Three



Four



Five

Six

The answers:

1. Echiniscus madonnae, a microscopic waterbear named after Madonna. These critters are virtually indestructible and have lived forever.

2. Gnathia marleyi, a fish parasite named after Bob Marley that is only found in the Caribbean Sea.

3. Eristalis gatesi, a flower fly named after Bill Gates. Yes, it crashes a lot.

4. Kootenichela deppi, a pre-historic arthropod that reminded the scientist of Edward Scissorhands, so he named it after Johnny Depp. Ironically, the scientist who discovered this many footed creature is named Dr. Legg!

5. Aleiodes gaga, a parasitoid wasp from Thailand named after Lady Gaga.

6. Sylvilagus palustris hefneri, a marsh rabbit named after the founder of Playboy, Hugh Hefner (Playboy bunny, get it?).

So where did we get this system to name all of the life on Earth (a science known as taxonomy)? Some say it formally started with Aristotle's classification scheme as early as 300 BC. First, an organism was divided into the plant or animal group. Second, animals were subdivided into those that had blood and those that did not. Third, animals were further divided into things that walked, flew, or swam. Aristotle's system gets confusing because a duck can do all of these things, but his scheme was good enough to last 2000 years.

In the 1700s, Carl Linnaeus revised this system to include more categories that grouped organisms based on their morphology (body form). He was also the one who perfected the binomial nomenclature with the genus and species names. Written properly, the genus is always capitalized and the species always in lower case, and the entire name should be in italics or underlined. Latin is used because it is a universal and "dead" language, meaning it is no longer in use and therefore immutable. Plus, it sounds very scholarly. The Linnaeus system is so elegant and effective, it is still used today.

Contributed by:  Bill Sullivan

Follow Bill on Twitter: @wjsullivan

Hanelt, B., Bolek, M., & Schmidt-Rhaesa, A. (2012). Going Solo: Discovery of the First Parthenogenetic Gordiid (Nematomorpha: Gordiida) PLoS ONE, 7 (4) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0034472