What are your resolutions about your pets?

Many of us have treasured, beloved pets. But how much time do you spend with yours? Oftentimes, pets are home alone all day long waiting for their beloved humans to return home and play with them. Is this you? Not that you don't love your pet dearly but you returm home from a long day and you're exhausted. You know you should spend some quality time with your pet, but you think, "let me just sit down for a minute and rest." We all do this with the best of intentions but your pet is totally dependent on you for food, water, love, entertainment and exercise. One of things I've started doing for Jack is to leave the radio, TV or a CD on for him. Many animals do seem to enjoy this and Jack is one of them. At least give it a try! Your pet may thank you!

Do dogs and cats like holiday music?

I never cease to be amazed by the new holiday music every year. Several years ago and version of "Jingle Bells," barked by dogs was taking over the radio waves. This year I've now heard the same "Jingle Bells" meowed by cats! I suppose it's clever but do you think dogs and cats get much out of it? My high school psychology professor cautioned us against anthropormorphizing, but I doubt the animals are impressed or amused! What do you think?

Want to get your pet some healing music?

Perry Wood has proven himself as a tremendous musician with his unusual debut album ANIMAL HEALING. Musically similar to the calming sounds of Steven Halpern and Kevin Kendle, Wood's delicate melodies shimmer with healing power, reducing stress and removing tension from one's animal companion. Working with Margit Coates, a respected animal healer, Wood's music is composed to touch the soul of the animal and its loving guardian in order to strengthen the bond and enhance their understanding and appreciation of each other. This hour-long recording has two extended tracks that take listeners on a journey to a soothing, calm place where animals and humans can find comfort. ANIMAL HEALING is great for jumpy cats or dogs that suffer from separation anxiety. According to the album's extensive liner notes written by Coates, this music will help open the listeners heart chakra and assist in greater intuitive communication between animal and guardian.

Research on Music and Animals

In Boston, David Schwartz has been studying the relationship of music and language for a long time. Recently, his study was published in the Journal of Neuroscience. Schwartz's study also casts light on the long-running question of whether animals understand or appreciate music. Despite the apparent abundance of "music" in the natural world -- birdsong, whalesong, wolf howls, synchronized chimpanzee hooting -- previous studies have found that many laboratory animals don't show a great affinity for the human variety of music making.
Marc Hauser and Josh McDermott of Harvard argued in the July issue of Nature Neuroscience that animals don't create or perceive music the way we do. The fact that laboratory monkeys can show recognition of human tunes is evidence, they say, of shared general features of the auditory system, not any specific chimpanzee musical ability. As for birds, those most musical beasts, they generally recognize their own tunes -- a narrow repertoire -- but don't generate novel melodies like we do. There are no avian Mozarts.
But what's been played to the animals, Schwartz notes, is human music. If animals evolve preferences for sound as we do -- based upon the soundscape in which they live -- then their "music" would be fundamentally different from ours. In the same way our scales derive from human utterances, a cat's idea of a good tune would derive from yowls and meows. To demonstrate that animals don't appreciate sounds the way we do, we'd need evidence that they don't respond to "music" constructed from their own sound environment.

My Sister's cat, Mo

I'm visiting my sister in Spartanburg, S.C. right now and she is the proud mother of a beautiful white kitty named "Mo." Her real name is Pianissimo because she is very, very soft. We think that Mo is a music lover because one of her favorite resting places is my sister's violin case! I will post a picture of this later.

Do you have any pictures of animals with musical instruments or anecdotes about animals and music? If so, please send them to me and I will post them.

Sweet Music for Milking

Researchers tell us that dairy cows produce more milk when listening to relaxing music. They believe farmers could get an extra pint from their charges by playing classical music or smoochy numbers in the cowshed.Not too surprising is it? As a former nursing mother, I can say that being relaxed helps humans produce more milk too. Psychologists at the University of Leicester, UK, played music of different tempos to herds of Friesian cattle.
Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony and Simon & Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Water were a big hit in the milking shed. But when rowdy numbers, like Mud's Tigerfeet and Size of a Cow by Wonderstuff, were played, there was no increase in milk yield.
"Calming music can improve milk yield, probably because it reduces stress," said Dr Adrian North, who carried out the study with colleague Liam MacKenzie.
Some farmers already play music to chickens, as there is anecdotal evidence that it reduces stress.
"A lot of farmers seem to think it works," Dr North told BBC News Online. "In essence, we're following their lead."

Why do some dogs sing?

Many times throughout my life, I've wondered why some dogs try to sing along with music they hear and others seem to be fairly oblivious to it. I've never really gotten a good answer to it, but here's what I did find out the other day:

Singing: some dogs "sing" very easily especially if they hear high tones. Some dogs can be trained to make different kinds of weird noises, especially the more vocal breeds/individuals. In Finland there is a famous dog call Gizmo who performs with a symphony orchestra. He sits on the owner's lap and sings along with their music! Dawn Carla Speer wrote: I could get Heike going for a couple of minutes straight ... I would make different sounds -- sort of like the range of sounds you could get from a wah-wah pedal for a guitar -- and she would imitate them really closely. If I told her "Be indignant!" she would make lower pitched noises, and if I said "Shhhh..." she would just make the mouth movements with no sound at all. This came from: http://users.tkk.fi/~mtt/belg_tricks.html Enjoy!

More on Music and Elephants

Yesterday I received a very interesting letter from a Dr. in India. He wanted to let me know vis-a-vis the article I posted on the depressed, anxious elephant who was healed with Mozart and other classics, about another instance of music with animals!

He said that there are many ancient sources in Indian literature which speak to just this sort of thing and especially to the power of strings, i.e., harp, violins, sitar, to calm and soothe angry elephants. It's hard to imagine a much worse situation than an angry elephant! Keep some soothing music on you Ipod!

Alice

Cricket Chorus and other sounds of Nature

This just passed by my desktop.I hadn't heard this particular correlation of all the sounds listed, though often wondered about it...of course, we know of the Cricket Chorus....reminds me of early information on the pentatonic/minor nature of many animal sounds and correlation to indigenous scales....Did not find this on Jeffrey Thompson's site, as indicated, but felt worthy of passing on...pehaps one of you know....Sounds of LifeScientists have discovered an amazing fact about the sounds of the ebb and flow of ocean tides, people's voices, dolphin cries, and bird and cricket chirps. They sound the same! When researchers slow down voice recordings of people, they discover the people's voices sound like the ebb and flow of ocean tides.Then when researchers speed up the recordings, people's voices sound like dolphin cries. Speeded up more, like bird chirps. Even more like crickets. And guess what crickets chirps sound like slowed down? Yep. First like birds. Then dolphins. Then people.But wait! There's more. While examining the recordings of spacecrafts Voyager I and II at the California Institute for Human Science, scientists discover the same sounds! NASA recordings from outer space sound remarkably like ocean sounds, choirs of voices singing, dolphins, birds and crickets.Additionally, sounds produced by the rings of Uranus are virtually identical to those produced by Tibetan bowls.Researchers believe that this similarity is no coincidence. Scientific medical studies are discovering that the sound vibrations of dolphins, Tibetan bowls and choirs have a profound healing effect.Could this be the "collective unconscious" that Carl Jung refers to? A living "collective library" that contains all the knowledge of theUniverse? Stay tuned!- Center for Neuroacoustic Research and The California Institute for Human Science

Has there been an "Avian Mozart"?

An interesting study came out in 2003. The gist of it as far as animals go is this:

Schwartz's study casts light on the long-running question of whether animals understand or appreciate music. Despite the apparent abundance of "music" in the natural world -- birdsong, whalesong, wolf howls, synchronized chimpanzee hooting -- previous studies have found that many laboratory animals don't show a great affinity for the human variety of music making.

Marc Hauser and Josh McDermott of Harvard argued in the July issue of Nature Neuroscience that animals don't create or perceive music the way we do. The fact that laboratory monkeys can show recognition of human tunes is evidence, they say, of shared general features of the auditory system, not any specific chimpanzee musical ability. As for birds, those most musical beasts, they generally recognize their own tunes -- a narrow repertoire -- but don't generate novel melodies like we do. There are no avian Mozarts.

But what's been played to the animals, Schwartz notes, is human music. If animals evolve preferences for sound as we do -- based upon the soundscape in which they live -- then their "music" would be fundamentally different from ours. In the same way our scales derive from human utterances, a cat's idea of a good tune would derive from yowls and meows. To demonstrate that animals don't appreciate sounds the way we do, we'd need evidence that they don't respond to "music" constructed from their own sound environment.

For more information on this, CLICK HERE
Comments? Thoughts? Ideas?

Music healing with animals in the news!

Hi Friends,

This is a brand-new blog of mine, created because of yet another article in the news that I saw. I am a huge animal lover and currently belong to a Papillon named Jack. I'll try to get his picture on the site!

Meanwhile, here is the article I saw:

Media expert Dr. Alice H. Cash, has been deluged with questions about how the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart "healed" a clinically depressed elephant.

Yesterday, July 12, a story emerged in media outlets around the world about a a 45-year-old elephant and long-time resident of the Zagreb Zoo,being inconsolable after her pachyderm partner of tens years died of cancer. By coincidence the zoo had organized a concert of classical chamber music right across from Suma's dwelling. At first Suma was anxious and unhappy about the musicians setting up so close to her but once the music started, Suma closed her eyes, leaned against the fence and was motionless throughout the concert. Now the zoo has set up a stereo in her area and she is beginning to feel better and emerge from her depression, thanks to Mozart, Bach and Pachelbel.

Not surprisingly, the animal-loving public wants to understand better how music affects their pets as well as zoo animals and animals in the wild. Dr. Cash is available for interviews on this particular area of music medicine as well as many others.

Please contact her at 502-419-1698 to set up at interview.