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