There is a story I love about Lyerbirds - a Flute player had some as pets back in the 1920's and they started mimmicking his music and they passed on the song to there chicks and you can still here bits of the songs to this day.
Since Vitruvius's 5 books of architecture stopped being required reading in the 50's for archtectural students the modern world really has become souless ugly crap.