Do you ever wonder if your animals at home enjoy the music that you listen to? Have you ever left music or the television on for your pets when you left for work? Even if you didn’t think about it before, there’s now scientific proof as to what kind of music our four-legged friends enjoy.
Music for dogs
According to Psychology Today, dogs are a lot like humans in their musical taste, albeit, played at a quieter volume for their sensitive ears.
Deborah Wells, a psychologist at Queens University in Belfast, played a mix of different music for dogs in an animal shelter to see exactly how they responded. The mixes included popular music (including Britney Spears, Robbie Williams, and Bob Marley), classical music (including Grieg’s “Morning,” Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons,” and Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”), or recordings by heavy metal bands like Metallica. To test if it was the music or not that had the effect, they also had periods of silence as well as recorded human conversations as control groups.
The study found that the popular music and human conversations didn’t really affect the dogs. Heavy metal seemed to bother them and caused them to bark. But classical music reduced the barking significantly and seemed to have a calming effect. So the next time you’re headed out without your pup, it might just comfort them to throw on some classical tunes and let them relax.
Music for cats
We all know that kitties are a bit more touchy than dogs, maybe even harder to please. So what kind of music do they like? It turns out that it has to be music made just for them. Regular human music didn’t have any real effect on the cats, but when the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the University of Maryland composed cat-centric music, they found some actual changes.
As you can hear in the song above, it’s definitely not your typical radio jam. To create the “cat music,” scientists tried to connect with what cats would find interesting, such as purring, suckling, sliding frequencies, and a higher octave. It turns out when cats heard this music made for them, they became excited and started approaching the speakers, often rubbing up against them.
Why make music for animals?
The reason scientists are doing these studies is because many animals in shelters are stressed out and these incredible scientists want to help them relax during their stay.
Now that you know, will you be playing tunes for your fuzzy four-legged friends? Do you believe it? What did your cats do when they heard the song above?
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