Do Animals Like Music?

So far in these blog posts, we’ve spoken a lot about our brains and how they process music. 

But what about other animals? Do they feel the same way we do about music?

Leaving the radio on for our pets when we leave the house is a common practice. We presume that playing music we would typically listen to in the background, soothes them.

There have been numerous studies that explore whether animals connect with music the same way humans do.

In an unpublished study, researchers Dr Adrian North and Liam McKenzie from the University of Leicester found that playing music for dairy cows had an unusual impact on their milk production; the cows produced more milk when listening to relaxed, slow music, like ‘Everybody Hurts’ by REM and Beethoven’s ‘Pastoral Symphony’!

During the study, the cow’s produced an extra 3% of milk per day when they were being played this type of music. 

Another study, conducted by the Scottish SPCA and the University of Glasgow, suggests that dogs prefer reggae and soft rock over other musical genres. 

During the study, 5 types of music were played to dogs staying in kennels; soft rock, Motown, pop, classical and reggae. The study showed that, overall, the dogs experienced the greatest decrease in stress levels when listening to soft rock and reggae.

But most studies actually find that animals aren’t really interested in human music.

An animal psychologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison recently discovered that animals actually enjoy, what he defines as, ‘species-specific music’. 

This refers to music that is specially designed using pitches, tones and tempos that are familiar to a particular animal’s species.

The psychologist’s 2015 study found that while cats were happy to ignore human music, they were highly responsive to music that was written specifically with cats in mind.

This doesn’t mean replicating cat sounds within the music, but writing music at a pitch and tempo that is familiar, and therefore appealing to, cats. For example, one of the songs used in the study based its tempo around a cat's purr. 

As discussed in our previous blogs, ‘Why Do We Like Music’ and ‘Creating Emotion’,  humans also tend to prefer music that falls within our own acoustic and vocal range, uses tones we can easily understand, and progresses at a tempo similar to that of our own heartbeats.

So maybe we’re not so different from our furry friends after all? 

I’d love to know your thoughts on this. Do you think animals enjoy music as we do? Let me know by tagging @hannahtrigwell!

You can get more from me (including music every month!) at: https://www.patreon.com/hannahtrigwell