Do Animals Appreciate Music?

Hey, welcome to Sign Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio. I'm Hoorheit Champ, and today we're tackling the question can animals appreciate music?

Now?

This is a special episode because we're going to talk to three people who play music for animals, but to each do it for a different reason. We're going to talk to an artist who sings to exotic animals to make online videos, an animal well for a specialist who works in the meat industry, and a psychologist who's interested in the musicality of animals. To bring your pets along and home tune with us as we answer the question can animals appreciate music?

Well?

Hey, everyone, all right. The first person we're talking to today is a musician who's known for posting videos where he sings to animals. If you spend time on social media, chances are you've seen Lauris, Aesadian who goes by the artist's name Plumes, playing a guitar outside in a farm or a field, singing to cows, parrots, lamas, mirkats, pandas, and even to raffs.

Las Plumes his.

Videos get millions of views, and his Instagram account, Plumes Official, has over a million followers. My biggest question for Plumes was do the animals actually react to his music? Well, thank you so much, mister Assadian for joining us.

Of course, thanks for having me.

Can you please tell us who you are and what you do.

Yeah, so I'm a singer. I'm a French singer and my artist's name is prim and I sing for a pretty unusual crowd, I would say, because it's animals, and yeah, I've been doing this for awhile.

Now.

Yeah, you push your videos on Instagram.

Exactly, Yeah, on pretty much all social media platforms.

Why did you start playing music for animals?

Well, I've found out that carols like music over three years ago now, so naturally I want to try it out for myself, being a musician and at the time I was living in the countryside with my grandma, so there's lots of cals around, so it was the perfect opportunity for me, and so I went in there. I was pretty scared at first.

Were you afraid that they would do harm to you or that they wouldn't like your music?

I guess both that they wouldn't like my music, so they would do harm to me as a replication of the thing. But there's giants, so I guess it can be a bit overwhelming. And they're also very curious, so they will come running towards you and you don't know if they're going to stop or not. So I was a bit scared. Now I'm not scared at all. Even though you have to be careful with animals sometimes you have to respect the boundaries and stuff. But yeah, now I'm not scared.

Wow.

How do animals typically react to you playing music for them?

Well, they pretty much all want to get closer to the music and investigate what the music is all about. Some of them even like rub their heads against me or try to have a contact, and others they just stay around to listen to music and it can last sometimes up to an hour.

Do you see them react to the specific songs, because I know sometimes in the video it seems like they're dancing to the music.

Yeah.

Sometimes, and some animals like parrots, have a sense of rhythm and they will start dancing in rhythm to the music and sometimes singing along and stuff like this.

Any other interesting reactions that you've noticed.

Mostly surprises, I would say, because there are some animals that you didn't expect to come close because they're wild, like the okps. I sang for an okp and I was warned before that nothing is going to happen, basically like you can try anyways, but it's not worth it in a way. And I went in there anyways, and he came right against me to listen to music for like an hour, all right.

If you look at Plumes's account Plumes of VCL, you see videos of them playing music to cows, goats, puppies, cats, pigs, mini pigs, horses, parrots, capybaras, meerkats, copies, elephants, giraffes, donkeys, deer, sheep, lemurs, flamingos, tapiers, owls, pandas, penguins, camels, rhinoceroses, gibbons, seals, raccoons, tigers, oh my. And in the videos you'll see the animals appear to react to his music playing. The animals will often come up to Plumes and we're curious or interested

Well, if there's a little nod or a little wink to like a species, I like to choose that song. I will play three Little Birds for parrots or things like this, you know, But usually it's mostly like love songs because I feel like the intent is very important and somehow they can feel the intent that you're putting out there.

So what has been your favorite animal to play for so far?

I would say the rhinos because it was like the most powerful expanse in a way, because once again we were told that they might not approach and they ended up being like right against me. I was on top of a rock for safety issues, and we thought they couldn't reach that rock. Turns out they could, and yeah, they kind of touch me with their arms. It was a bit dangerous this time. I'm not gonna lie, but it was so powerful and we all like to de season once in a lifetime moment for us.

So they did react to the music.

Yeah, yeah, they were very curious. And we even came back the next day and the same thing happened.

And so they seemed to generally react to the music.

Yeah.

Yeah, a lot of people don't want to see that animals are sensitive so that they would come anyways no matter what. But turns out when well, there are twenty minutes beforehand to set up the cameras and the mics and stuff, and the animals don't come, and it's only when the music stells that they end upcoming her. So it's interesting to reat us.

Oh wow, Now I know what you're thinking. This doesn't sound very scientific, and it's not. We're going to talk to two scientists later in the program who do academic research on the connections between animals and music. But what's interesting about these videos is not how the animals react to the music, but how one specific animal reacts to the videos themselves. Well, I think the most interesting animal reaction you have to your videos is from people. Yeah,

Yeah, I guess if I can make people click the same way clicked for me when I first met animals, it's great, you know, because I don't want to be like telling people what to do, so I guess I just put my videos online and people take what they want from it. Like a lot of times, people tell me, yeah, I stopped teaching meat since I first started watching your wids, and that means a lot to me if I can have a positive impact on the animal world.

When you said something click, what do you mean by that?

Well, for me, I stopped teaching meat today I met animals, so there's definitely something that clicks for me. I was like, how can I think for a cow in the afternoon and then at night itter s.

Tech or whatever.

Somebody also said you are such a bright, beautiful spot in a troubled world. Thank you for creating a bridge between humans and animals.

That's very kay. I feel like It might sound a little bit boomer, but I feel like maybe we lost touch on generation with nature, and so maybe it feels good for people to get that back, to see people hanging out with animals. I think it can definitely feel even powerful and soothing for people to watch.

Yeah, a lot of people mention that we're living in very troubled times.

I know I have a lot of American people following me, and I don't know much about politics and stuff, but I guess it's not the best right now. I don't really know, So if I can help to make them feel a little bit better, that's great.

All right. So we have a first send account someone who's played music to penguins, seals, drafts, and all kinds of animals, and he reports that animals in general do reactive with music and seem genuinely curious about it. Next, we're going to talk to scientists who's done something similar to plumes, but in a scientific setting. She's played music to pigs to figure out what kind of music they like to listen to and whether or not music can

Yeah?

Yes, So a lot of people are afraid to copy my VIDs when they go and sing for animals. And I would say, if you've seen make it, honestly, it's so nice. If I can inspire people to do the same thing, I won't take it badly at all. So if you're a musician and you want to try it out, please do.

Oh great, I might try it out for this episode.

All nice?

Did you play music?

I play a little piano and a little bit of guitar, but I'm a terrible singer. I think that might be the problem, but.

I don't think they care, honestly, can't the least judge the audience that I've had.

Stay with us, We'll be right back, Welcome back. All right. We're answering the question can animals appreciate music? And we just heard from a musician play music for animals ranging from giraffes to pandas, and according to him, the animals do react, or at least they seem treious. So another question is is this really true? Do animals have an actual

I am Maria Camilla Sevadius, and I am Associate Professor of Animal Welfare and Behavior at the University of Calgary. I am a researcher and specifically my research focus in finding strategies to improve the quality of life of animals, especially captive animals. One of the research lines which I have started is in a strong collaboration with doctor Erardo Rodriguez, is identifying music as a possible environmental enrichment.

What is this idea of using music for animal welfare?

When we have captive animals, there are different strategies to improve their welfare. Right, One way to improve their welfare is giving them some environmental such as give them control of the environment where they are or make that environment better. Music is and now it is environment talentca so we can use different kinds of sounds to improve the environment.

Where they are.

I guess what do we know about how animals respond to music?

In animals, there is a lot of studies demonstrating that different species of animals they react to music. They change behaviors depending on the quality of the music or the type of music that you put they will react right.

According to doctors Valius, there have been many studies that have looked at how animals react to music. Scientists have cleared music to gorillas, chimpanzees, sparrows, elephants, cows, and dogs, to somewhat mixed results. Some studies find that the animals do react while others don't, and usually the studies use classical music. For example, a scientists have tested whether classical music makes guerrillas less anxious. It does, or whether it

For example, we did a study in collaboration with doctor Bernardo from the University of Antiochia and Juliana who was the first author of this was her PhD.

Study.

We wanted to see first if pigs will react to music right, and second, after we identified if they react or not, what kind of music they like. More So Bernardo, he is a musician so he created different kinds of music where he knew all this spectro temporal characteristic of the music. So, for example, number of instruments the high frank and see contained the amplitude, the same troid desonance right the spectral devia.

So there are a lot.

Of different things that you know as a musician that you have the information.

Doctor Sibaias and her colleagues wanted to know what kind of music pigs react to. So they created music pieces that had different properties, how complex it is, what frequencies it had, and specifically they varied something called consonants. Now I'm not a musician, but the idea is that a certain combination of notes seem more pleasant to us than others. There's no exact definition, and it's all a bit subjective. But for example, in Western tradition, this combination of notes

So we use a specific indicator called qualitative behavior assessment, which allows us to assess emotions.

How does this work.

This is a broad indicator where you have different terms, right, such as for example, comfortable, stress, fearful, and there are around twenty terms. Then you have a visual and analogical scale. You observe the animal independent on how the animal interacts with the environment, and you will give in that analogical scale. Okay, I think this animal is happy, it's playful, it's comfortable, or noise is stress, is fearful or things like that.

I see. This is a person with a paper observing the animal and then rating all of these different adjectives correct.

And that allows us to identify how is the emotion of the animal in terms of that specific situation.

All right, here's the experiment. There's two parts. In the first, the scientists played music with different characteristics to a group of pigs and observed how the pigs reacted based on a scale of emotions.

From there, we identified, for example, that pigs they negatively react.

To this music.

If you put this on a music that will generate fear, they will generate the stress, but consonant music will generate like positive emotions such as play such as happy.

So, yeah, if you found the consonant notes in music I played for you pleasant and the dissonant music notes unpleasant, so the pigs they have the same reaction to the music you and I have, okay. And then the second part of the experiment they use the music pigs like the consonant music as a form of therapy.

And then the next step was using that music that we identified like that is spectro te characteristic music that we identified that actually they were reacting better. It was compared with pigs that did not receive any stimulus.

Here, the pigs were split into two groups. For one group of pigs, the scientists would play the consonant music at different times during the day, and for the other group, they wouldn't play them any music at all. And then they measured two things, how the pigs behaved and also their levels of cortsol, which is a stress hormone.

Wholly unidentified that for example, pigs that received the music, they would cope better with the environment in terms of she evaliated behavioral characteristics and also physiological characteristics. Right, so those big lids that received the environmental enrichment. Physiologically, they had a better pattern. They are less.

Stress okay, somehow Okay, So to recap the found, picks seem to have an emotional reaction to different kinds of music, and that plain for them, the music that made them exhibit more positive emotions lowered their stress level. Okay, So then your study and other studies have shown that animals have an emotional response to music. Is that true?

Well, so we speak about emotions, right. Other studies have mostly focused on other indicators such as behavior or they have physiological indicators that demonstrates that they are coping better. But specific studies speaking about these generates emotions. We still need to work and continue and trying to find emotions to identify to evaluid emotions. It's difficult, right, Animals won't tell you, oh, I feel good.

Right right? Well, what do you think was happening then in the pig's brain when you played the music that they seem to respond better to.

So, pigs they are extremely similar to humans, right, They work physiologically, very very similar to us. So they have all these structures in the brain that allows them to process that sense, all the stimus so they will hear it, it will enter, it will be processed in the year, and then it will go through the ipotala mus and

Is a lack of studies on that. This princess to the main question of the episode. What's going on in the animals' brain when it hears music? Can they actually appreciate it? To find out, we're going to talk to a neuroscientists studies the brains of animals to figure out if they have something called musicality. Stay with us, you're listening to science stuff. Welcome back. We're answering the question

Thank you very much for having me. Can you please tell us who you are and what do you do. Yes, my name is Andre Ravignani. I am a researcher and a professor at the Department of Human Neurosciences at Sapienza University of Roman and also honorary professor at the Center for Music in the Brain in Als in Denmark, which is probably one of the few places in the world where the study of neuroscience and music are combined.

So can you explain to us what is biomusicology.

It's a term that has been used a lot in recent years to denote a biological approach to music, or better a biological approach to musicality. And this is a very important distinction. To make music is the you know, the cultural artifact, the object of study of many fields of humanities and arts. While musicality is defined as the set of skills that allows us to produce, perceive music, to move in time to music, and so on and

And so you do this by comparing humans and animals exactly.

Our general approaches not to play Mozart to teenagers and to cows and to see what effect it has on their behavior. Our approach is to distill the building blocks of musicality.

Doctor Ravinani studies the musicality of animals, which is basically the ability to understand music, and these published papers about disability and seals, chimpanzees, squirrel, monkeys, penguins, whales, dogs, dolphins, rangutans and other animals. Now, according to doctor Ravinani, musicality can be broken down into a set of skills that some animals seem to have and others don't.

So, for instance, one of those is bit perceptions. For instance, when we go to a club and we dance and we're moving time to music, then we recruit these fairly complex and neural capacity to moving time and to predict the next bit. Other traits are vocal learning, so learning sounds that do not belong to your natural repertoire learning sounds that are not innate. You can think about absolute

Right according to doctor Ravinyanni, there's a list of skills that, put together, add up to an ability to perceive, understand, and make music, in other words, to appreciate music. So now the question is do animals have these skills. We'll start with deep perception.

Big perception is a very complex ability underlying our musicality, and if we think about it for seconds, to us, it seems natural to moving time to music. However, neurally and psychologically, the process of bait perception is extremely complex because music is not a metrino. It's a complex stream of sounds. So the first thing that our brain needs to do is to extract a recurring beat. So basically we impose our expectations when is the next beat gonna come?

So recognizing a beat is not that simple, but from studies of human brains. Scientists knew that beat perception was related to talking or vocalizing because they share some of the same brain areas, and sure enough, one of the first animals beat perception was found in where parrots.

A study on a dancing parrot snowballed the cockatool showed that actually, yeah, we have a second data point. So the parrot was dancing in timed music and then speeding up or slowing down depending on the bpm of the song, and so on and so forth.

So parrots can keep a beat, and apparently sil can sea lions and seals. Twenty thirteen, Ronan, the sea lion, became famous as the only non human mammal known that could keep a beat. Scientists started training Ronan when the animal was only three years old to bob its head to a beat, and just this year, the scientists showed that Ronan could keep a beat as well or better than humans. This is also something that doctor Gravignani has studied with seals.

We did so called playback experiments where we broadcasted rhythmic sounds of other seals to specific individual seals, and we saw when they responded to the coal. So did they respond to the sound in time with it, in synchrony with it, and we found that in the harbor seals they synchronized with the delay but very regularly, and they adapt the bpm depending on the bpm of.

The sound, meaning they can tense the beat.

We need to do more research before we can say that harbor seals can sense the beat, but definitely they have some capacities to synchroniz eyes.

Another musicality skill that's been found in animals is perfect pitch.

That has been tested in quite a few bird species. Birds so that they're very good at picking individual sounds, so they have absolute pitch, something that is very rare in humans, so they can recognize, okay, this is four hundred herds, this is for fifty, for twenty, even without being given a reference pitch.

And another skill is the ability to tell half notes from quarter notes.

There is this integer ratio, a feature where you know, if you think about we will rock you stompstonm clup, stomp storm clup, so you have one unit of time going from the first step to the second stone, and then from the club to the next stomp. It's exactly two units of time. And this produces some so called integeration. This integer ratio we found in the injury lemurs of Madagascar.

That they use the quarter note and the half note. Is that kind of what you mean? Yeah, exactly, So lemurs can keep track of half and quarter notes. Finally, another skilled musicality, singing together, has also been found in animals.

Another interesting building blocks of music is the capacity for vocal joint action or for vocal coordination. So gibbondes are apes. They're the one apes the farthest away from us, but they are still apes. They're not monkeys. And they sing in duets. Right, So a male and a female will pay a bond for a long while and they sing to each other in a duet where some notes overlap and some don't. And what we have seen is they

It's the ability to listen and then adapt your own music production.

Yeah, your own vocal production.

Interesting. So we've seen that in the animal kingdom.

Indeed very often in singing privates and also in birds.

Now there are musicality skills that haven't been found in animals. For example, the ability to recognize a melody even if you play it on a different scale. That's called led transposition or meter, which is recognizing patterns or groupings and beats haven't been seen in any animal. But doctor Ramniani argies that doesn't mean animals can't do it. It just means we need to keep looking.

They take on messages that for every musicality trade. Every time someone says, I reckon that this musicality building block is unique human, then a few years later someone finds a species that also has that traite, right, So it

All right, So the components of understanding and appreciating music have been found in different animals, but to date humans seem to be the only species with all the skills. Now what does that mean for our main question? So if someone were to ask you, do you think animals can appreciate music? How would you answer that question?

I think the short answer to that that we really do not know. I think that the first question to ask is do they even care about it? So carrying and appreciating music is a bit of an anthropocentric perspective in a way, because for us it's such an important thing. And then on top of that, music is the human cultural artifact. Right would you enjoy listening for hours of dolphin whistles or chimpanzee drumming? There are animal signals, animal sounds, communicative sounds.

But it sounds like we have found some musicality in some species. It is the question, then, can you connect that musicality to feelings for some sort of reaction.

Yes, potentially some music sounds and no music sounds can have some emotional value for different species. But this has to do with more basic sound perception rather than music per se.

I see. So the answer might be that they might be able to appreciate music, but probably not human music.

Yeah, potentially species specific music. Actually, some colleagues in the US have been working towards trying to understand whether we can make species specific music. So there are even albums out there on iTunes of cat music, and the peer reviewed studies where they showed that you know, this cat specific music played by a cello in used relaxation in cats, and so on and so forth.

Okay, last question. The first part of this episode, I told the musician who plays music for animals, I was going to try it, and I'm terrible and I don't think very well, but I'm gonna try to sing to some animals, maybe a dog or a cat. How do you think that dog or cat is going to react?

So, first of all, it depends on the species. So a cat and a dog have already a very different perceptual and cognitive world one from one another. Right, How they see the world and how they feel the world as we know is very different, right, even between breeds of dogs. And then it also depends a lot on the experiences that that cat or dog has done during their life. Right, so you know, imagine that the dog was raised by an owner.

That we always think we don't really high pitch to convey that, come on here, cuties, Or imagine that the dog was mistreated by someone with a very deep noise like that, And then if you hit some.

Low notes, the dog is not going to have a very good reaction, right, And then who knows? Again, I don't explve the fact that many animals might be enjoying music, our own music, their own music, but we still don't know enough I see, Right, So if you pay music to a catera dog, they either won't care or they will react based on what those sounds have been associated with in the past. And don't get me wrong, and

All right, So to recap the whole episode, animals seem to react to music. They can have what seems like an emotional response to it. For example, you can play music that lowers their stress level. And many species seem to have the brain circuits to do single musical tasks like keep a beat or tell notes apart or sing together. But whether they can appreciate music might depend whether they can even hear the sounds in that music and what

What was the Mango?

The cat went behind you and we started just kind of like laying out and stretching out, and so I think he was definitely listening.

For sure, he comes and listens when I played the guitar. She won't really hang out with me in here, but he will all come and.

Play the guitar and he'll sit on the couch or he'll just lay on the carpet next to me

And he'll just hang out so he does that her not so much, but he definitely does