Animals and Music

 Zoomusicology is a field of musicology and zoology that is the study of the music of animals and how animals react to music. (Wikipedia) 

Throughout history various composers have evoked or imitated animal sounds such as Jean-Philippe Rameau’s “The Hen” 1728), Camille Saint-Saens “Carnival of Animals (1886) George Crumb’s “Vox Balaenae (Voice of the Whale) 1971 just to name a few. (Wikipedia) 

Many animal lovers assume that if we like rock and roll or jazz or oldies then our pets must like the same kind of music we like. Not so.  

David Teie a composer and Charles Snowdon a primate communication researcher had an idea to see how music affects animals.  

According to a Live Science article researchers Snowdon and Teie found “Humans like music that falls within our acoustic and vocal range, (music that) uses tones we understand and progresses at a tempo similar to that of our heartbeats. A tune pitched too high or low sounds grating or ungraspable and much too fast or slow is unrecognizable as such.” 

The same applies to animals. Our beloved pets can’t stand our music mostly.  

Snowdon and Teie created music that falls within the ranges of certain animals.  

Cats, according to Snowdon, don’t care for music for the most part but it seems that young and old cats like the cat specific music that the researchers created, middle aged cats don’t care for any music.  

Dogs are a different issue because there are so many different breeds and many types of music would have to be created. In 2012 a study published in the Journal of Veterinary Behavior played classical music, heavy metal and alternate classical (whatever that is) and they found that the dogs calmed down while listening to classical.  

In 2001 researches at the University of Leicester played different kinds of music for 9 weeks to 1000 milk cows. The results were the more calming the music the better the yield of milk.  

In 2013 in a published journal Behavioral Processes reveal that gold fish can be trained to tell the difference between Bach and Stravinsky.  

There is one more issue that affects animals; they don’t know the difference between absolute perfect pitch and relative pitch. Absolute perfect pitch aka perfect pitch is “the rare ability to identify or recreate a musical note without the benefit of a reference note” (Wikipedia). Relative pitch “the ability to identify or recreate a given musical not by comparing it to a reference not and identifying the interval between those two notes (Wikipedia).  

Because we love our pets there is now species-specific music however it seems that animals do have good absolute pitch but don’t have relative pitch. If a tune’s notes are transposed from a tune they already know the tune will not be recognized.  

Consequently, animals and humans understand music differently.  

Next time you are tempted to blast Black Sabbath for your pet while you are at work, don’t do that, instead go on line and find out what new species-specific music is available for your pup, kitty, fish, elephant, monkey, spider, snake and so on.  

Georgia

7.2021