Special Music for Special Friends

Many KDFC listeners tell stories of their pet’s interaction to our music – some leave the radio on all day for their furry and feathered friends. While a 2001 study revealed that dairy cows produced more milk listening to Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony(!), new research has uncovered our pet’s favorite music is a bit different from ours.

For man’s best friend classical was the most soothing and assuming that could mean favorite. If you are a cat lover you know they march to their own drummer. They could mostly care less about music designed for humans, but when you compose with certain frequencies in mind they pay attention. Charles Snowden, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, along with composer David Teie and psychology student Megan Savage, came up with some music specifically organized and created for cats.

Here is a sample

I’ve mentioned how I often hear bird song at the end of many recordings from old churches and the like. It turns out that bird’s brains react to making music in the same way human brains do. Sarah Earp, the lead researcher of the study at Emory University, states that the areas of the bird’s brains that are affected by music are the brain regions “associated directly with reward…the neural response to birdsong appears to depend on social context, which can be the case with humans as well.”

Read more including how elephants do at music making here.