Music is an essential piece to the human experience. We have been playing, enjoying, and engaging with music for thousands of years with every single culture having some form of it. It is one of the most “human” things about humans. The question always has been, however, do animals enjoy music too?
We would all love our dogs to like the same music we do.
For many, we assume that because we like country music, our pets enjoy listening. While this may not be exactly true, science does have some interesting things to say about animals and music. The answer isn’t a simple yes or no, but it is an interesting one.
For most animals, including humans, heartbeat is tied to musical taste.
Something interesting to know is that animals and humans prefer tempo that is similar to their heartbeats. Humans have a normal heart rate of 60-100 BPM. Music, on the other hand, usually falls within 90-150.
The second factor is pitch and range.
Naturally, humans don’t enjoy music that is too high to hear well (a fly buzzing) or too low to make sense of (tectonic plates). The same goes for other animals! Live Science says:
Against the conventional wisdom that music is a uniquely human phenomenon, recent and ongoing research shows that animals actually do share our capacity for it. But rather than liking classical or rock, Snowdon, an animal psychologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has discovered that animals march to the beat of a different drum altogether. They enjoy what he calls “species-specific music”: tunes specially designed using the pitches, tones and tempos that are familiar to their particular species.
That probably explains why cows love jazz!
Ther have been a few videos recently that show cows being a wonderful audience to jazz or classical players! Both of those music genres have instruments with a very low register (the tuba, trombone, and bass). With a cow moo being incredibly low, maybe they are onto something.
One jazz group tested this out!
The New Hot 5 is an American jazz group that was filmed playing for a herd of course in France. As they started to play, their bovine audience seemed super intrigued. Soon after starting, they had a crowd. It seems the dairy squad likes Coltrane.
The group of cows is very attentive and face the musicians with perfect composure. They really love the show.
It seems the theory is proving to be true, with a tuba player and a trombone player in the mix. The cows make for a great audience. This isn’t even the first time this has happened, either! There are other examples of farmers and their cow buddies listening to music.
Another farmer serenades his cows with a trombone each day and brings them in from pasture.
Maybe the next innovation in cow farming isn’t technology that is all fancy and new, but something that is a classic. And who knows, maybe jazzy cows make better milk.
Check out the jazz players and their bovine crowd below.
Please SHARE this with your friends and family.
