According to all the videos I have seen of animals responding positively to human music, the answer is a very confident YES but it must depend on the individual animal, the species and the music. The video on this page is but one example. Clearly animals share their liking for music with us. My guess is that they have preferences just like us and I think that you’ll find that different species of animal have different musical preferences too. I feel that I am allowed to speculate as a non-scientist because on my assessment there is very little science on how animals respond to music. We have to rely on ‘anecdotal evidence’ as the experts call it. If you know better then please leave a comment.
Geese like the music of the mouth organ. Interestingly pet owners can buy music composed for animals. The purpose is normally to calm them down when stressed. I would expect the composers of this ‘animal music’ to have intelligently guessed what animals like and they may be wrong. Looking at videos, it seems to me that animals like human music and not so much animal music composed by humans!
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It is a reminder that humans are animals too: the human-animal. In terms of anatomy, emotions, brain function, physiology, genetics humans overlap so much with animals that it should come as no surprise that animals like music. It is just a series of pleasant sounds after all.
Do animals have music? The question was asked by George Herzog and he answered the question on February 27, 1939 in an article. Humans describe the calls of birds as birdsong. They sing to each other. Singing is music. Animals have music on that short discussion according to humans. Animals don’t think of it as music. For them birdsong is birds calling each other but it sounds like music to us.
But clearly, certain sounds tweet the brain both of humans and other animals.
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When you do a Google Scholar search for “animals human music” the top articles you find have been written many years ago. And there’s little on whether animals appreciate human music. The discussion is about animals making ‘music’ through their calls but this is just a description, as mentioned, of the communication between animals.
Human-composed music for animals is based upon the frequency range and tempos of the communication signals that they create for themselves. So, the music that we create for them depends upon our understanding of the communication system of other species.
A recent study stated that: “Playing music or natural sounds to animals in human care is thought to have beneficial effects. An analysis of published papers on the use of human-based music with animals demonstrates a variety of different results even within the same species. These mixed results suggest the value of tailoring music to the sensory systems of the species involved and in selecting musical structures that are likely to produce the desired effects.”
BELOW ARE SOME PAGES ON DOG SOUNDS. Interestingly the call of the wolf is like music to some humans. Music works two ways. Once again highlighting the similarities between animals and the human-animal which is no surprise.
