Music to their ears?

Note: I won't keep this long today since I need a break from all of the serious posts I've done related to pets' safety (which if it's your first time here, you should definitely check out the previous blogs I've written about how to keep your pets safe).

Music has become such an integrated part of our lives, that we possibly couldn't imagine a life without it. But for animal lovers and pet owners out there, we might've all have had this question at one point or another: do our pets enjoy music like we do? Do they even hear music the same way we do?

The simple answer is yes, pets can also hear music just like we do. However, their responses and how they perceive music is different from what we hear. For the sake of this short blog, I'm only limiting the variables to dogs and cats, since these 2 species are the most common pets in the United States. (I'm sorry for all tarantula owners — y'all are out of luck...but also because according to this article about the famous spider from Home Alone 2, tarantulas don't hear any sound...so there's that.)

For starters, dogs have a much more heightened sense of hearing compared to us ye dull humans. They can hear 10 times better than we can, and they can also tell the direction of the sound origin from farther away. For that reason, it is important that whatever music we play in front of them, we do so at a quiet/decent volume. Anything that's too loud will traumatize them because of their sensitive ears. For what it's worth, however, they seem to respond better to classical music than heavy metal music as stated in this article, so I guess I'm putting all of my Metallica, Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, AC/DC, and Dream Theater CDs in my headphones instead of my speakers from here on out...

Cats are altogether a different breed. They seem quite indifferent to any music we put in front of them (which really just fits their character in general). However, they were more responsive when playing music that's written specifically by scientists using their preferred frequencies that are used for purring. This article claims that after testing around 47 households with cats and playing this specific music, young kittens and older cats seemed to most responsive, by moving up to the speaker or even rub against it. While there is nothing overtly peculiar about music written for cats (like one here), you can hear that they did put an emphasis using the lower frequencies that cats use for purring.

That's it for today! Hope you enjoyed this short and light post. I guess it's time to start looking for that Bach French Sonatas on Spotify to play for my dogs.