JUL 15, 2018

Can Animals Appreciate Music?

WRITTEN BY: Nouran Amin

 

Our appreciation of rhyme and rhythm might not be unique. Animals may also be music lovers.

Using music studies done on crocodiles, the researchers found different patterns of brain activity when these crocodiles listened to Bach as opposed to random chords. This suggested, that to the crocodiles, the music clearly sounded different to them.

Interestingly, many can go a step further and actually distinguish between different genres of music. Pigeons, for example, can be trained to peck one key if they hear an organ piece by Bach and a different key if they hear an orchestral piece by Stravinsky.

In one study, scientists actually created music specifically for cats using sliding frequencies. Sliding frequencies are a common feature of cat vocalizations, and setting the tempo to the same number of beats per minute as purring.