Can animals appreciate music?

gaidensensei

Banned
May 31, 2003
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Brain-exercise thread, this is a new idea I wanted to launch so every other week you can dig in your brain or flame your eyes out.

This weeks is: Can animals appreciate and understand music? By animal I mean any multicellular organism.
It appears it is an area that's not researched very much nor looked into.
What say you?
 

her209

No Lifer
Oct 11, 2000
56,336
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Yes. Maybe not the same kind of music as human listen to but birds do sing and pick mates based on their songs.

/thread
 

Azraele

Elite Member
Nov 5, 2000
16,524
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I've seen videos of birds sort of bopping along to their owner's music. And I know my cat certainly appreciated it when I didn't sing. She couldn't get out of the room fast enough if I started up. Everybody's a critic. :p
 

Linflas

Lifer
Jan 30, 2001
15,395
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It's Music to These Monkeys' Ears -- and Also Their Hearts

Whales have songs, and so do birds, of course. But does music lift the spirits of a swallow? Do humpbacks hum to make themselves mellow?

Although bird songs and many other animal vocalizations have been the subject of intense scientific study, the effect of music on the moods of creatures other than humans has remained mysterious. If anything, research has suggested that animals are indifferent to human music, whether it's a sonata, a ballad or a rocker.

But a provocative new study, spawned by an unusual partnership between a cellist with the National Symphony Orchestra and a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, has provided some of the first evidence that humans are not the only species whose heartstrings are pulled by music.

We leave music playing at a low volume for our dogs and cats while we are at work. I know they pay attention to it, one of our Beagles that is afraid of gun shots on TV associates the Universal intro music with that type of programming and heads for her crate whenever I pop in a DVD and it plays be it "The Office" or "Miami Vice". She also used to react the same way to the HBO white noise intro before "The Sopranos" came on.
 

Fritzo

Lifer
Jan 3, 2001
41,920
2,161
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No. Music is an extension of language, and no animals known besides man has an advanced comprehension of language.
 

gaidensensei

Banned
May 31, 2003
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Here's an argument I have for the pro bird/parrots. I did look into it before I posted this.

What if they are imitating music and have no understanding of what they're saying?
 

shiner

Lifer
Jul 18, 2000
17,112
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Our dog hates Coldplay. Every time the wife puts that shit on the dog starts howling and wants to go outside.
 

zinfamous

No Lifer
Jul 12, 2006
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Fail. See parrot video.

that's imitation, and it's a cockatiel, no?


African Grey's on the other hand, have a rather extensive comprehension of language--and can interpret some 300 words in a human vocabulary. math, color recognition, patterns and shapes. all sorts of crazy stuff. rather solid evidence for understanding language amongst supposed "bird brains." Iirc, Alex the African Grey was able to express how he was feeling with "sad," "happy," "hungry"...

in making this argument, though, "language" is a rather vague term. Animals have extremely complex languages within species, doesn't mean that it has to be spoken. Some are spoken, though: prairie dogs, whales, dolphins, et al have very complex languages that depend on vocal patterns and inflections, just like with humans.

Alex:
http://www.economist.com/obituary/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9828615
 

hanoverphist

Diamond Member
Dec 7, 2006
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No. Music is an extension of language, and no animals known besides man has an advanced comprehension of language.

advanced comprehension of music and appreciation of music dont really go hand in hand. my bird gets very vocal when he hears some songs, and keeps it up until i turn it down or off. other songs he will get up on his perch and dance around to. he also sings his own tunes, but refuses to learn any i want him to sing.

my old cats used to terrorize my apartment unless i left music on for them to listen to.

music does not need to be understood to feel the rhythm/ beat and know you like or dislike it.
 

Lummex

Senior member
Apr 6, 2008
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One of my dogs always comes to sit under the piano when I'm playing, and will also want to be the room if I'm singing/guitaring it up. But I'm not sure if it's because he just wants to be around me, or if he likes the sounds I'm making. I lean towards him enjoying the music because he is an extremely neurotic dog most of the time, who insists on following my father around everywhere (or the oldest person in the house at the moment), but when I play he walks in and plops down right beneath the piano bench.
 

Fritzo

Lifer
Jan 3, 2001
41,920
2,161
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advanced comprehension of music and appreciation of music dont really go hand in hand. my bird gets very vocal when he hears some songs, and keeps it up until i turn it down or off. other songs he will get up on his perch and dance around to. he also sings his own tunes, but refuses to learn any i want him to sing.

my old cats used to terrorize my apartment unless i left music on for them to listen to.

music does not need to be understood to feel the rhythm/ beat and know you like or dislike it.

Just repeating what people much more qualified that I have reported from studies over the years. Your bird may be singing for the reason birds start singing when they hear other birds.
 

DesiPower

Lifer
Nov 22, 2008
15,299
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Hey some time back there was that video of a cockatoo dancing its butt off on music... youtube blocked here so cant link...
 

SlitheryDee

Lifer
Feb 2, 2005
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They probably have some level appreciation of it. Music is just the unordered cacophony of the natural world given structure. We like it because it's easy to wrap our minds around. We like things to be predictable and consistent. Knowing something is coming gives us pleasure, therefor a beat repeated over and over or a repeating melody gives us pleasure.

We do the same thing in all our works. There are few perfectly straight lines in nature, yet most of our structures are made of straight lines and angles with predictable strengths. The organic curvature that is present in nature is too hard to use with consistent results, so we don't use it. Likewise, the noise we hear on a summer night in the jungle from the thousands of animals, trees, and insects is not predictable. We cannot encompass it in our minds, and yet our nature insists that we listen to it to glean what information we can.

Take that desire to listen, give it something simple and predictable to listen to, and the mind experiences pleasure in being given such an easy job to do. It experiences pleasure because it is hearing everything that is going on in the music, and understands it to the point that it can predict with near absolute precision what will happen next in the song. After all, wasn't it patterns that our ancient ancestors were straining so hard to hear in their outdoor nests at night? Wasn't the best case scenario one in which you could predict what would happen next?

What then, is stopping animals of lesser mental development from experiencing the same pleasure on some level? It's our own animal nature that causes us to appreciate music after all. We're just smart enough to design sounds that press our instinctual pleasure button over and over again.
 
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IronWing

No Lifer
Jul 20, 2001
73,134
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Yes. One of our cats will walk time to any music with a steady beat (he really likes Middle Eastern Sufi music). When one song ends and another begins, he pauses for a couple seconds to listen and then sets off again, walking in rhythm to the new song. He's kind of a weird cat anyway as he will walk sometimes for hours a day.

A couple of our other cats seem to relax to choral music and Native American flute music. Other cats don't seem to care.

The german shepard used to hate, hate, hate the lady with the blue fiddle on Hee Haw. Whenever she would play he would go bury his head under the couch cushions.
 

gaidensensei

Banned
May 31, 2003
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I didn't see that bopping cockatoo video before. It would seem really interesting if it was actually doing it to the music because that's a decent level of brain power to understand it. I notice the video is slightly moving with the beats though, not sure if that implies anything. But anyway that is only the avians we are talking about.

What about apes and monkeys? This would seem to be an area to look for.