Music for Creatures

Both Great and Small

Who has not heard the phrase, “Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast”? It may be misquoted—17th-century playwright William Cosgrove wrote “savage breast”—but now there is scientific evidence to prove the adage right.

It’s not a new thought. As far back as the 1950s, my elderly uncle kept a radio in his barn tuned to soft music in the belief it would encourage his cows to produce more milk—a supposition later confirmed through university studies that showed calm cows let down more milk. Dairy cows seem to prefer songs with fewer than 100 beats per minute.

International guitarist and composer Janet Marlow of Litchfield made a similar observation in 1994 when she noted that her cat and dog sat near her when she was playing. That observation led to a decades-long study of the power of music in the lives of domestic animals, creatures biologically designed for the natural world, but now living in an acoustically chaotic human environment.

“It was a pivotal moment when I realized how music relaxes animals through my own observation,” she said.

Taking that observation, she began to digitally modify human music for dogs and cats, later adding other domesticated animals such as horses, birds and even pigs. “It changed the direction of my life,” she said. “Twenty-five years later I have become a leading expert on how animals hear.”

She has consulted with universities where experiments are conducted on animals and sound. “They have been very generous in sharing their papers,” she reported. “There have been significant biometric clinical studies where they were able to measure music for dogs, cats and horses. They found it lowered cortisol levels in the blood of horses and they measured the pulse rate, activity level and Heart Rate Variability in different animals while they were listening to music. I produce music based on their findings.”

The focus of her online company, Pet Acoustics, is to provide an ideal sonic balance to relax domestic pets. “A lot of people say they have done studies but it’s anecdotal,” she said. “We are depending on the animals’ physical responses.”

She explains that animals—and humans—evolved for species-specific circumstances, where hearing was crucial to survival. “It’s an invisible world of sound,” she said. “Music is the power and we have found it is a power for positive and negative. The living cell is moved by energy and vibration.”

When sound enters the ear canal, it hits the cilia and ear drum, triggering the auditory nerve to the brain. Cats can hear from 40 to 85,000 Hertz (Hz), which is more than three times higher than human hearing while dogs hear sounds as high as 47,000 to 65,000 Hz. Humans with healthy ears cannot hear sounds above 20,000 Hz.

“When a cat sits in your yard, staring at nothing, it’s really listening to moles in the ground,” she said. “Once you start realizing how nature works, sounds become extremely prevalent. But because it’s invisible to our limited human hearing, we don’t pay attention.”

“If the sound is too high or too low, it triggers a fight or flight response,” Marlow continued. “What animals look for in the wild is a safe place to release that stress and they continue that response in our homes. There is a whole upper register of sounds that humans don’t even hear, and they are what cause stresses.”

“We provide a very noisy living environment for them in our homes,” she said. “If you drop a pot in the kitchen and your cat is there in a nano-second it will be gone.” And just as high-decibel exposures can compromise human hearing, they also produce deafness in our pets.

When animals are in a human environment, their natural instincts are still to listen for sounds that might presage danger. This can produce constant stress. “I’ve provided a tool that just needs to be turned on to immerse them in a comfort zone, not responding to high and low levels,” she stated.

“Some dogs who live in apartment buildings spend the day listening for all the noises,” she continued. “Playing this music will mask the sounds so I suggest putting the speaker near the door.”

Apparently, animals do not respond to specific styles of music but it is likely they would not love Taylor Swift with her oscillating sound. Rather, animals respond to the frequency and decibel level of music, with cats responsive to long sustained sounds while horses, another of her study subjects, prefer a rhythmic beat. “You can actually see them moving rhythmically,” she said. (Does anyone remember the old song, Don’t Fence Me In, with its lyrics about the horse who is “syncopated gaited”—how prescient!)

She was asked to develop music for pigs who are known to be aggressive, sometimes cannibalistic, mothers. After a two-year study she produced music that transformed the pigsty from a potential lunch bar to a playpen. “They went from aggressive behavior to play behavior,” she reported.

For those with an insatiable curiosity about pigs’ preferences in music, she said their hearing is on a lower level (ranging from 42 Hz to 250 Hz), “more entrenched in vibrations and lower levels.”

Her songs for pets offer no jarring notes. She uses string instruments such as violins, harps and guitars with nary a brass instrument to be found. “Then I go into the notes and modify the frequency and decibel content for each species’ comfort zone,” she explained. “I have music for dogs, music for cats and music for dogs and cats together. But, if the dog is the more agitated, it is better to focus on keeping the dog in balance.”

Her company, Pet Acoustics (petacoustics.com), offers a range of products, including Bluetooth compatible speakers that broadcast her musical albums for different species; a plush puppy with a heartbeat and another model with both heartbeat and tunes; her book, What Dogs Hear: Understanding Canine Hearing and Behavior and more. She is working on a documentary entitled, Ears: the Amazing World of Dogs and Cats.

“When we think of the power of music over humans and then translate that to animals, its effect is exponential for them because their hearing is so much more than ours. The more we appreciate the health of our animals, the more human we become.”