Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Sign Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio. I'm
Speaker 1: Hoorheit Champ, and today we're tackling the question can animals
Speaker 1: appreciate music?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: This is a special episode because we're going to talk
Speaker 1: to three people who play music for animals, but to
Speaker 1: each do it for a different reason. We're going to
Speaker 1: talk to an artist who sings to exotic animals to
Speaker 1: make online videos, an animal well for a specialist who
Speaker 1: works in the meat industry, and a psychologist who's interested
Speaker 1: in the musicality of animals. To bring your pets along
Speaker 1: and home tune with us as we answer the question
Speaker 1: can animals appreciate music?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, all right. The first person we're talking to
Speaker 1: today is a musician who's known for posting videos where
Speaker 1: he sings to animals. If you spend time on social media,
Speaker 1: chances are you've seen Lauris, Aesadian who goes by the
Speaker 1: artist's name Plumes, playing a guitar outside in a farm
Speaker 1: or a field, singing to cows, parrots, lamas, mirkats, pandas,
Speaker 1: and even to raffs.
Speaker 4: Las Plumes his.
Speaker 1: Videos get millions of views, and his Instagram account, Plumes Official,
Speaker 1: has over a million followers. My biggest question for Plumes
Speaker 1: was do the animals actually react to his music? Well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much, mister Assadian for joining us.
Speaker 5: Of course, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Can you please tell us who you are and what
Speaker 1: you do.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so I'm a singer. I'm a French singer and
Speaker 5: my artist's name is prim and I sing for a
Speaker 5: pretty unusual crowd, I would say, because it's animals, and yeah,
Speaker 5: I've been doing this for awhile.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you push your videos on Instagram.
Speaker 5: Exactly, Yeah, on pretty much all social media platforms.
Speaker 1: Why did you start playing music for animals?
Speaker 5: Well, I've found out that carols like music over three
Speaker 5: years ago now, so naturally I want to try it
Speaker 5: out for myself, being a musician and at the time
Speaker 5: I was living in the countryside with my grandma, so
Speaker 5: there's lots of cals around, so it was the perfect
Speaker 5: opportunity for me, and so I went in there. I
Speaker 5: was pretty scared at first.
Speaker 1: Were you afraid that they would do harm to you
Speaker 1: or that they wouldn't like your music?
Speaker 5: I guess both that they wouldn't like my music, so
Speaker 5: they would do harm to me as a replication of
Speaker 5: the thing. But there's giants, so I guess it can
Speaker 5: be a bit overwhelming. And they're also very curious, so
Speaker 5: they will come running towards you and you don't know
Speaker 5: if they're going to stop or not. So I was
Speaker 5: a bit scared. Now I'm not scared at all. Even
Speaker 5: though you have to be careful with animals sometimes you
Speaker 5: have to respect the boundaries and stuff. But yeah, now
Speaker 5: I'm not scared.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: How do animals typically react to you playing music for them?
Speaker 5: Well, they pretty much all want to get closer to
Speaker 5: the music and investigate what the music is all about.
Speaker 5: Some of them even like rub their heads against me
Speaker 5: or try to have a contact, and others they just
Speaker 5: stay around to listen to music and it can last
Speaker 5: sometimes up to an hour.
Speaker 1: Do you see them react to the specific songs, because
Speaker 1: I know sometimes in the video it seems like they're
Speaker 1: dancing to the music.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Sometimes, and some animals like parrots, have a sense of
Speaker 5: rhythm and they will start dancing in rhythm to the
Speaker 5: music and sometimes singing along and stuff like this.
Speaker 1: Any other interesting reactions that you've noticed.
Speaker 5: Mostly surprises, I would say, because there are some animals
Speaker 5: that you didn't expect to come close because they're wild,
Speaker 5: like the okps. I sang for an okp and I
Speaker 5: was warned before that nothing is going to happen, basically
Speaker 5: like you can try anyways, but it's not worth it
Speaker 5: in a way. And I went in there anyways, and
Speaker 5: he came right against me to listen to music for
Speaker 5: like an hour, all right.
Speaker 1: If you look at Plumes's account Plumes of VCL, you
Speaker 1: see videos of them playing music to cows, goats, puppies, cats, pigs,
Speaker 1: mini pigs, horses, parrots, capybaras, meerkats, copies, elephants, giraffes, donkeys, deer, sheep, lemurs, flamingos, tapiers, owls, pandas, penguins, camels, rhinoceroses, gibbons, seals, raccoons, tigers,
Speaker 1: oh my. And in the videos you'll see the animals
Speaker 1: appear to react to his music playing. The animals will
Speaker 1: often come up to Plumes and we're curious or interested
Speaker 1: in the music. There's one video where he plays a
Speaker 1: Lady Gaga song to a white tiger and the tiger
Speaker 1: seems to come over and sit down to listen. Or
Speaker 1: in another video, he plays an Oasis song to some
Speaker 1: orangutans and the orangutans not only come over to listen,
Speaker 1: but one of them starts to clap, which made me
Speaker 1: wonder what kind of music does each animal like to hear?
Speaker 1: So in your videos you've sung Green Day to puppies,
Speaker 1: Bruno Mars to horses, the Beatles to donkeys, Katie Perry
Speaker 1: to flamingos. How do you pick the music to sing
Speaker 1: to each animal?
Speaker 5: Well, if there's a little nod or a little wink
Speaker 5: to like a species, I like to choose that song.
Speaker 5: I will play three Little Birds for parrots or things
Speaker 5: like this, you know, But usually it's mostly like love
Speaker 5: songs because I feel like the intent is very important
Speaker 5: and somehow they can feel the intent that you're putting
Speaker 5: out there.
Speaker 1: So what has been your favorite animal to play for
Speaker 1: so far?
Speaker 5: I would say the rhinos because it was like the
Speaker 5: most powerful expanse in a way, because once again we
Speaker 5: were told that they might not approach and they ended
Speaker 5: up being like right against me. I was on top
Speaker 5: of a rock for safety issues, and we thought they
Speaker 5: couldn't reach that rock. Turns out they could, and yeah,
Speaker 5: they kind of touch me with their arms. It was
Speaker 5: a bit dangerous this time. I'm not gonna lie, but
Speaker 5: it was so powerful and we all like to de
Speaker 5: season once in a lifetime moment for us.
Speaker 1: So they did react to the music.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, they were very curious. And we even came
Speaker 5: back the next day and the same thing happened.
Speaker 1: And so they seemed to generally react to the music.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, a lot of people don't want to see that
Speaker 5: animals are sensitive so that they would come anyways no
Speaker 5: matter what. But turns out when well, there are twenty
Speaker 5: minutes beforehand to set up the cameras and the mics
Speaker 5: and stuff, and the animals don't come, and it's only
Speaker 5: when the music stells that they end upcoming her. So
Speaker 5: it's interesting to reat us.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, Now I know what you're thinking. This doesn't
Speaker 1: sound very scientific, and it's not. We're going to talk
Speaker 1: to two scientists later in the program who do academic
Speaker 1: research on the connections between animals and music. But what's
Speaker 1: interesting about these videos is not how the animals react
Speaker 1: to the music, but how one specific animal reacts to
Speaker 1: the videos themselves. Well, I think the most interesting animal
Speaker 1: reaction you have to your videos is from people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let me read you a couple of comments. I saw
Speaker 1: somebody said, your videos make me look and feel animals
Speaker 1: in a way that is totally new for me. And
Speaker 1: that's if you sort of echo what you said the
Speaker 1: first time you did this. What do you think is
Speaker 1: happening to people who see these videos of you playing
Speaker 1: to animals?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I guess if I can make people click the
Speaker 5: same way clicked for me when I first met animals,
Speaker 5: it's great, you know, because I don't want to be
Speaker 5: like telling people what to do, so I guess I
Speaker 5: just put my videos online and people take what they
Speaker 5: want from it. Like a lot of times, people tell me, yeah,
Speaker 5: I stopped teaching meat since I first started watching your wids,
Speaker 5: and that means a lot to me if I can
Speaker 5: have a positive impact on the animal world.
Speaker 1: When you said something click, what do you mean by that?
Speaker 5: Well, for me, I stopped teaching meat today I met animals,
Speaker 5: so there's definitely something that clicks for me. I was like,
Speaker 5: how can I think for a cow in the afternoon
Speaker 5: and then at night itter s.
Speaker 3: Tech or whatever.
Speaker 1: Somebody also said you are such a bright, beautiful spot
Speaker 1: in a troubled world. Thank you for creating a bridge
Speaker 1: between humans and animals.
Speaker 5: That's very kay. I feel like It might sound a
Speaker 5: little bit boomer, but I feel like maybe we lost
Speaker 5: touch on generation with nature, and so maybe it feels
Speaker 5: good for people to get that back, to see people
Speaker 5: hanging out with animals. I think it can definitely feel
Speaker 5: even powerful and soothing for people to watch.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of people mention that we're living in
Speaker 1: very troubled times.
Speaker 5: I know I have a lot of American people following me,
Speaker 5: and I don't know much about politics and stuff, but
Speaker 5: I guess it's not the best right now. I don't
Speaker 5: really know, So if I can help to make them
Speaker 5: feel a little bit better, that's great.
Speaker 1: All right. So we have a first send account someone
Speaker 1: who's played music to penguins, seals, drafts, and all kinds
Speaker 1: of animals, and he reports that animals in general do
Speaker 1: reactive with music and seem genuinely curious about it. Next,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk to scientists who's done something similar
Speaker 1: to plumes, but in a scientific setting. She's played music
Speaker 1: to pigs to figure out what kind of music they
Speaker 1: like to listen to and whether or not music can
Speaker 1: make pigs feel emotions. We'll dig into that, but first
Speaker 1: I should tell tell you about a terrible idea I had.
Speaker 1: Is there anything that you would like to tell folks
Speaker 1: out there?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Yes, So a lot of people are afraid to copy
Speaker 5: my VIDs when they go and sing for animals. And
Speaker 5: I would say, if you've seen make it, honestly, it's
Speaker 5: so nice. If I can inspire people to do the
Speaker 5: same thing, I won't take it badly at all. So
Speaker 5: if you're a musician and you want to try it out,
Speaker 5: please do.
Speaker 1: Oh great, I might try it out for this episode.
Speaker 3: All nice?
Speaker 5: Did you play music?
Speaker 1: I play a little piano and a little bit of guitar,
Speaker 1: but I'm a terrible singer. I think that might be
Speaker 1: the problem, but.
Speaker 5: I don't think they care, honestly, can't the least judge
Speaker 5: the audience that I've had.
Speaker 1: Stay with us, We'll be right back, Welcome back. All right.
Speaker 1: We're answering the question can animals appreciate music? And we
Speaker 1: just heard from a musician play music for animals ranging
Speaker 1: from giraffes to pandas, and according to him, the animals
Speaker 1: do react, or at least they seem treious. So another
Speaker 1: question is is this really true? Do animals have an actual
Speaker 1: emotional reaction when you play human music for them? To
Speaker 1: answer this question, I talk to someone who does research
Speaker 1: in animal welfare, Professor Maria Camilla Sevaios.
Speaker 2: I am Maria Camilla Sevadius, and I am Associate Professor
Speaker 2: of Animal Welfare and Behavior at the University of Calgary.
Speaker 2: I am a researcher and specifically my research focus in
Speaker 2: finding strategies to improve the quality of life of animals,
Speaker 2: especially captive animals. One of the research lines which I
Speaker 2: have started is in a strong collaboration with doctor Erardo Rodriguez,
Speaker 2: is identifying music as a possible environmental enrichment.
Speaker 1: What is this idea of using music for animal welfare?
Speaker 2: When we have captive animals, there are different strategies to
Speaker 2: improve their welfare. Right, One way to improve their welfare
Speaker 2: is giving them some environmental such as give them control
Speaker 2: of the environment where they are or make that environment better.
Speaker 2: Music is and now it is environment talentca so we
Speaker 2: can use different kinds of sounds to improve the environment.
Speaker 3: Where they are.
Speaker 1: I guess what do we know about how animals respond
Speaker 1: to music?
Speaker 2: In animals, there is a lot of studies demonstrating that
Speaker 2: different species of animals they react to music. They change
Speaker 2: behaviors depending on the quality of the music or the
Speaker 2: type of music that you put they will react right.
Speaker 1: According to doctors Valius, there have been many studies that
Speaker 1: have looked at how animals react to music. Scientists have
Speaker 1: cleared music to gorillas, chimpanzees, sparrows, elephants, cows, and dogs,
Speaker 1: to somewhat mixed results. Some studies find that the animals
Speaker 1: do react while others don't, and usually the studies use
Speaker 1: classical music. For example, a scientists have tested whether classical
Speaker 1: music makes guerrillas less anxious. It does, or whether it
Speaker 1: helps dogs sleep better. It does. In one study, scientists
Speaker 1: from the University of twelf tested whether country music made
Speaker 1: cows want to be milk more it does. It all
Speaker 1: makes doctor Sivaias and her colleagues wonder if the type
Speaker 1: of music played to pigs made a difference.
Speaker 2: For example, we did a study in collaboration with doctor
Speaker 2: Bernardo from the University of Antiochia and Juliana who was
Speaker 2: the first author of this was her PhD.
Speaker 3: Study.
Speaker 2: We wanted to see first if pigs will react to
Speaker 2: music right, and second, after we identified if they react
Speaker 2: or not, what kind of music they like. More So Bernardo,
Speaker 2: he is a musician so he created different kinds of
Speaker 2: music where he knew all this spectro temporal characteristic of
Speaker 2: the music. So, for example, number of instruments the high
Speaker 2: frank and see contained the amplitude, the same troid desonance
Speaker 2: right the spectral devia.
Speaker 3: So there are a lot.
Speaker 2: Of different things that you know as a musician that
Speaker 2: you have the information.
Speaker 1: Doctor Sibaias and her colleagues wanted to know what kind
Speaker 1: of music pigs react to. So they created music pieces
Speaker 1: that had different properties, how complex it is, what frequencies
Speaker 1: it had, and specifically they varied something called consonants. Now
Speaker 1: I'm not a musician, but the idea is that a
Speaker 1: certain combination of notes seem more pleasant to us than others.
Speaker 1: There's no exact definition, and it's all a bit subjective.
Speaker 1: But for example, in Western tradition, this combination of notes
Speaker 1: is considered consonant, whereas this combination is considered dissonant. Now
Speaker 1: here's an example of consonant music. The scientists played the pigs.
Speaker 1: Here's an example of the dissonant music they played. And
Speaker 1: at the same time, while of the music was playing,
Speaker 1: doctor Sebaias and her colleagues measured the pig's emotions.
Speaker 2: So we use a specific indicator called qualitative behavior assessment,
Speaker 2: which allows us to assess emotions.
Speaker 1: How does this work.
Speaker 2: This is a broad indicator where you have different terms, right,
Speaker 2: such as for example, comfortable, stress, fearful, and there are
Speaker 2: around twenty terms. Then you have a visual and analogical scale.
Speaker 2: You observe the animal independent on how the animal interacts
Speaker 2: with the environment, and you will give in that analogical scale. Okay,
Speaker 2: I think this animal is happy, it's playful, it's comfortable,
Speaker 2: or noise is stress, is fearful or things like that.
Speaker 1: I see. This is a person with a paper observing
Speaker 1: the animal and then rating all of these different adjectives correct.
Speaker 2: And that allows us to identify how is the emotion
Speaker 2: of the animal in terms of that specific situation.
Speaker 1: All right, here's the experiment. There's two parts. In the first,
Speaker 1: the scientists played music with different characteristics to a group
Speaker 1: of pigs and observed how the pigs reacted based on
Speaker 1: a scale of emotions.
Speaker 2: From there, we identified, for example, that pigs they negatively react.
Speaker 1: To this music.
Speaker 2: If you put this on a music that will generate fear,
Speaker 2: they will generate the stress, but consonant music will generate
Speaker 2: like positive emotions such as play such as happy.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, if you found the consonant notes in music
Speaker 1: I played for you pleasant and the dissonant music notes unpleasant,
Speaker 1: so the pigs they have the same reaction to the
Speaker 1: music you and I have, okay. And then the second
Speaker 1: part of the experiment they use the music pigs like
Speaker 1: the consonant music as a form of therapy.
Speaker 2: And then the next step was using that music that
Speaker 2: we identified like that is spectro te characteristic music that
Speaker 2: we identified that actually they were reacting better. It was
Speaker 2: compared with pigs that did not receive any stimulus.
Speaker 1: Here, the pigs were split into two groups. For one
Speaker 1: group of pigs, the scientists would play the consonant music
Speaker 1: at different times during the day, and for the other group,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't play them any music at all. And then
Speaker 1: they measured two things, how the pigs behaved and also
Speaker 1: their levels of cortsol, which is a stress hormone.
Speaker 2: Wholly unidentified that for example, pigs that received the music,
Speaker 2: they would cope better with the environment in terms of
Speaker 2: she evaliated behavioral characteristics and also physiological characteristics. Right, so
Speaker 2: those big lids that received the environmental enrichment. Physiologically, they
Speaker 2: had a better pattern. They are less.
Speaker 1: Stress okay, somehow Okay, So to recap the found, picks
Speaker 1: seem to have an emotional reaction to different kinds of music,
Speaker 1: and that plain for them, the music that made them
Speaker 1: exhibit more positive emotions lowered their stress level. Okay, So
Speaker 1: then your study and other studies have shown that animals
Speaker 1: have an emotional response to music. Is that true?
Speaker 2: Well, so we speak about emotions, right. Other studies have
Speaker 2: mostly focused on other indicators such as behavior or they
Speaker 2: have physiological indicators that demonstrates that they are coping better.
Speaker 2: But specific studies speaking about these generates emotions. We still
Speaker 2: need to work and continue and trying to find emotions
Speaker 2: to identify to evaluid emotions. It's difficult, right, Animals won't
Speaker 2: tell you, oh, I feel good.
Speaker 1: Right right? Well, what do you think was happening then
Speaker 1: in the pig's brain when you played the music that
Speaker 1: they seem to respond better to.
Speaker 2: So, pigs they are extremely similar to humans, right, They
Speaker 2: work physiologically, very very similar to us. So they have
Speaker 2: all these structures in the brain that allows them to
Speaker 2: process that sense, all the stimus so they will hear it,
Speaker 2: it will enter, it will be processed in the year,
Speaker 2: and then it will go through the ipotala mus and
Speaker 2: it will go through the tiling cephalo. I would assume
Speaker 2: that the process of the music would be pretty similar
Speaker 2: to the process of music we have in humans, but
Speaker 2: we don't know right there.
Speaker 1: Is a lack of studies on that. This princess to
Speaker 1: the main question of the episode. What's going on in
Speaker 1: the animals' brain when it hears music? Can they actually
Speaker 1: appreciate it? To find out, we're going to talk to
Speaker 1: a neuroscientists studies the brains of animals to figure out
Speaker 1: if they have something called musicality. Stay with us, you're
Speaker 1: listening to science stuff. Welcome back. We're answering the question
Speaker 1: can animals appreciate music? And here we get to the
Speaker 1: heart of the matter, or should I say the brain
Speaker 1: of the matter. In the last two segments, we confirm
Speaker 1: that animals react to music and that they seem to
Speaker 1: have an emotional response to different kinds of music. Now
Speaker 1: we'll get to the question do they really appreciate music?
Speaker 1: To answer that, I talk to a cognitive neuroscientist who's
Speaker 1: been studying the musicality of animals. Well, thank you doctor
Speaker 1: Raviani for joining us.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much for having me. Can you please
Speaker 3: tell us who you are and what do you do. Yes,
Speaker 3: my name is Andre Ravignani. I am a researcher and
Speaker 3: a professor at the Department of Human Neurosciences at Sapienza
Speaker 3: University of Roman and also honorary professor at the Center
Speaker 3: for Music in the Brain in Als in Denmark, which
Speaker 3: is probably one of the few places in the world
Speaker 3: where the study of neuroscience and music are combined.
Speaker 1: So can you explain to us what is biomusicology.
Speaker 3: It's a term that has been used a lot in
Speaker 3: recent years to denote a biological approach to music, or
Speaker 3: better a biological approach to musicality. And this is a
Speaker 3: very important distinction. To make music is the you know,
Speaker 3: the cultural artifact, the object of study of many fields
Speaker 3: of humanities and arts. While musicality is defined as the
Speaker 3: set of skills that allows us to produce, perceive music,
Speaker 3: to move in time to music, and so on and
Speaker 3: so forth. Musicality is more the set of psychological, cognitive,
Speaker 3: biological building blocks that makes us musical animals.
Speaker 1: And so you do this by comparing humans and animals exactly.
Speaker 3: Our general approaches not to play Mozart to teenagers and
Speaker 3: to cows and to see what effect it has on
Speaker 3: their behavior. Our approach is to distill the building blocks
Speaker 3: of musicality.
Speaker 1: Doctor Ravinani studies the musicality of animals, which is basically
Speaker 1: the ability to understand music, and these published papers about
Speaker 1: disability and seals, chimpanzees, squirrel, monkeys, penguins, whales, dogs, dolphins,
Speaker 1: rangutans and other animals. Now, according to doctor Ravinani, musicality
Speaker 1: can be broken down into a set of skills that
Speaker 1: some animals seem to have and others don't.
Speaker 3: So, for instance, one of those is bit perceptions. For instance,
Speaker 3: when we go to a club and we dance and
Speaker 3: we're moving time to music, then we recruit these fairly
Speaker 3: complex and neural capacity to moving time and to predict
Speaker 3: the next bit. Other traits are vocal learning, so learning
Speaker 3: sounds that do not belong to your natural repertoire learning
Speaker 3: sounds that are not innate. You can think about absolute
Speaker 3: and relative pitch. So imagine I play happy Birthday to you,
Speaker 3: or imagine yeah, all the human beings singing happy birthday
Speaker 3: to you, They're not always starting from the same note.
Speaker 3: So I start from a sea and you start from
Speaker 3: a C sharp. It's just the same melody, but presposed
Speaker 3: of a semi tone, and to us it sounds exactly
Speaker 3: the same unless you have absolute pitch. One related to
Speaker 3: rhythm is meter perception. Another one is percussive behavior, and
Speaker 3: there are many more.
Speaker 1: Right according to doctor Ravinyanni, there's a list of skills that,
Speaker 1: put together, add up to an ability to perceive, understand,
Speaker 1: and make music, in other words, to appreciate music. So
Speaker 1: now the question is do animals have these skills. We'll
Speaker 1: start with deep perception.
Speaker 3: Big perception is a very complex ability underlying our musicality,
Speaker 3: and if we think about it for seconds, to us,
Speaker 3: it seems natural to moving time to music. However, neurally
Speaker 3: and psychologically, the process of bait perception is extremely complex
Speaker 3: because music is not a metrino. It's a complex stream
Speaker 3: of sounds. So the first thing that our brain needs
Speaker 3: to do is to extract a recurring beat. So basically
Speaker 3: we impose our expectations when is the next beat gonna come?
Speaker 1: So recognizing a beat is not that simple, but from
Speaker 1: studies of human brains. Scientists knew that beat perception was
Speaker 1: related to talking or vocalizing because they share some of
Speaker 1: the same brain areas, and sure enough, one of the
Speaker 1: first animals beat perception was found in where parrots.
Speaker 3: A study on a dancing parrot snowballed the cockatool showed
Speaker 3: that actually, yeah, we have a second data point. So
Speaker 3: the parrot was dancing in timed music and then speeding
Speaker 3: up or slowing down depending on the bpm of the song,
Speaker 3: and so on and so forth.
Speaker 1: So parrots can keep a beat, and apparently sil can
Speaker 1: sea lions and seals. Twenty thirteen, Ronan, the sea lion,
Speaker 1: became famous as the only non human mammal known that
Speaker 1: could keep a beat. Scientists started training Ronan when the
Speaker 1: animal was only three years old to bob its head
Speaker 1: to a beat, and just this year, the scientists showed
Speaker 1: that Ronan could keep a beat as well or better
Speaker 1: than humans. This is also something that doctor Gravignani has
Speaker 1: studied with seals.
Speaker 3: We did so called playback experiments where we broadcasted rhythmic
Speaker 3: sounds of other seals to specific individual seals, and we
Speaker 3: saw when they responded to the coal. So did they
Speaker 3: respond to the sound in time with it, in synchrony
Speaker 3: with it, and we found that in the harbor seals
Speaker 3: they synchronized with the delay but very regularly, and they
Speaker 3: adapt the bpm depending on the bpm of.
Speaker 1: The sound, meaning they can tense the beat.
Speaker 3: We need to do more research before we can say
Speaker 3: that harbor seals can sense the beat, but definitely they
Speaker 3: have some capacities to synchroniz eyes.
Speaker 1: Another musicality skill that's been found in animals is perfect pitch.
Speaker 3: That has been tested in quite a few bird species.
Speaker 3: Birds so that they're very good at picking individual sounds,
Speaker 3: so they have absolute pitch, something that is very rare
Speaker 3: in humans, so they can recognize, okay, this is four
Speaker 3: hundred herds, this is for fifty, for twenty, even without
Speaker 3: being given a reference pitch.
Speaker 1: And another skill is the ability to tell half notes
Speaker 1: from quarter notes.
Speaker 3: There is this integer ratio, a feature where you know,
Speaker 3: if you think about we will rock you stompstonm clup,
Speaker 3: stomp storm clup, so you have one unit of time
Speaker 3: going from the first step to the second stone, and
Speaker 3: then from the club to the next stomp. It's exactly
Speaker 3: two units of time. And this produces some so called integeration.
Speaker 3: This integer ratio we found in the injury lemurs of Madagascar.
Speaker 3: So my colleagues at the University of Turin have been
Speaker 3: recording their spontaneous vocalizations of these limours for about twenty years,
Speaker 3: and based on this very large chorpus of limour songs,
Speaker 3: we have seen that that's the first case of a
Speaker 3: mammal that they are not humans that can produce this, meaning.
Speaker 1: That they use the quarter note and the half note.
Speaker 1: Is that kind of what you mean? Yeah, exactly, So
Speaker 1: lemurs can keep track of half and quarter notes. Finally,
Speaker 1: another skilled musicality, singing together, has also been found in animals.
Speaker 3: Another interesting building blocks of music is the capacity for
Speaker 3: vocal joint action or for vocal coordination. So gibbondes are apes.
Speaker 3: They're the one apes the farthest away from us, but
Speaker 3: they are still apes. They're not monkeys. And they sing
Speaker 3: in duets. Right, So a male and a female will
Speaker 3: pay a bond for a long while and they sing
Speaker 3: to each other in a duet where some notes overlap
Speaker 3: and some don't. And what we have seen is they
Speaker 3: coordinate their song. Sometimes males do solos, sometimes males singing
Speaker 3: a duet and if we compare the rhythm of their
Speaker 3: song in a solo or in a duet, we see
Speaker 3: a star difference between the two. So we see that
Speaker 3: when the male sings in a duet, his notes are
Speaker 3: much more adjusted and predictable to coordinate with the female.
Speaker 3: This kind of vocal coordination that we deploy when we
Speaker 3: sing in a choir or in many other contexts.
Speaker 1: It's the ability to listen and then adapt your own
Speaker 1: music production.
Speaker 3: Yeah, your own vocal production.
Speaker 1: Interesting. So we've seen that in the animal kingdom.
Speaker 3: Indeed very often in singing privates and also in birds.
Speaker 1: Now there are musicality skills that haven't been found in animals.
Speaker 1: For example, the ability to recognize a melody even if
Speaker 1: you play it on a different scale. That's called led
Speaker 1: transposition or meter, which is recognizing patterns or groupings and
Speaker 1: beats haven't been seen in any animal. But doctor Ramniani
Speaker 1: argies that doesn't mean animals can't do it. It just
Speaker 1: means we need to keep looking.
Speaker 3: They take on messages that for every musicality trade. Every
Speaker 3: time someone says, I reckon that this musicality building block
Speaker 3: is unique human, then a few years later someone finds
Speaker 3: a species that also has that traite, right, So it
Speaker 3: particularly goes like that. So I think the take on
Speaker 3: message of all these research until now is that even
Speaker 3: though the full package of these musicality traits might be
Speaker 3: uniquely human, for each trait we can find at least
Speaker 3: another animal species that has it, so we are not
Speaker 3: so unique after all.
Speaker 1: All right, So the components of understanding and appreciating music
Speaker 1: have been found in different animals, but to date humans
Speaker 1: seem to be the only species with all the skills.
Speaker 1: Now what does that mean for our main question? So
Speaker 1: if someone were to ask you, do you think animals
Speaker 1: can appreciate music? How would you answer that question?
Speaker 3: I think the short answer to that that we really
Speaker 3: do not know. I think that the first question to
Speaker 3: ask is do they even care about it? So carrying
Speaker 3: and appreciating music is a bit of an anthropocentric perspective
Speaker 3: in a way, because for us it's such an important thing.
Speaker 3: And then on top of that, music is the human
Speaker 3: cultural artifact. Right would you enjoy listening for hours of
Speaker 3: dolphin whistles or chimpanzee drumming? There are animal signals, animal sounds,
Speaker 3: communicative sounds.
Speaker 1: But it sounds like we have found some musicality in
Speaker 1: some species. It is the question, then, can you connect
Speaker 1: that musicality to feelings for some sort of reaction.
Speaker 3: Yes, potentially some music sounds and no music sounds can
Speaker 3: have some emotional value for different species. But this has
Speaker 3: to do with more basic sound perception rather than music
Speaker 3: per se.
Speaker 1: I see. So the answer might be that they might
Speaker 1: be able to appreciate music, but probably not human music.
Speaker 3: Yeah, potentially species specific music. Actually, some colleagues in the
Speaker 3: US have been working towards trying to understand whether we
Speaker 3: can make species specific music. So there are even albums
Speaker 3: out there on iTunes of cat music, and the peer
Speaker 3: reviewed studies where they showed that you know, this cat
Speaker 3: specific music played by a cello in used relaxation in cats,
Speaker 3: and so on and so forth.
Speaker 1: Okay, last question. The first part of this episode, I
Speaker 1: told the musician who plays music for animals, I was
Speaker 1: going to try it, and I'm terrible and I don't
Speaker 1: think very well, but I'm gonna try to sing to
Speaker 1: some animals, maybe a dog or a cat. How do
Speaker 1: you think that dog or cat is going to react?
Speaker 3: So, first of all, it depends on the species. So
Speaker 3: a cat and a dog have already a very different
Speaker 3: perceptual and cognitive world one from one another. Right, How
Speaker 3: they see the world and how they feel the world
Speaker 3: as we know is very different, right, even between breeds
Speaker 3: of dogs. And then it also depends a lot on
Speaker 3: the experiences that that cat or dog has done during
Speaker 3: their life. Right, so you know, imagine that the dog
Speaker 3: was raised by an owner.
Speaker 4: That we always think we don't really high pitch to
Speaker 4: convey that, come on here, cuties, Or imagine that the
Speaker 4: dog was mistreated by someone with a very deep noise
Speaker 4: like that, And then if you hit some.
Speaker 3: Low notes, the dog is not going to have a
Speaker 3: very good reaction, right, And then who knows? Again, I
Speaker 3: don't explve the fact that many animals might be enjoying music,
Speaker 3: our own music, their own music, but we still don't
Speaker 3: know enough I see, Right, So if you pay music
Speaker 3: to a catera dog, they either won't care or they
Speaker 3: will react based on what those sounds have been associated
Speaker 3: with in the past. And don't get me wrong, and
Speaker 3: not belittling animals, I love animals. What I'm saying is
Speaker 3: that their cognitive and perceptual world is very complex and
Speaker 3: nuance like our own, and so the music that you're
Speaker 3: going to play or sing is the result of a
Speaker 3: bunch of cultural accumulation, and that probably not all the
Speaker 3: nuances we see in them are gonna speak to them,
Speaker 3: and vice versa.
Speaker 1: All right, So to recap the whole episode, animals seem
Speaker 1: to react to music. They can have what seems like
Speaker 1: an emotional response to it. For example, you can play
Speaker 1: music that lowers their stress level. And many species seem
Speaker 1: to have the brain circuits to do single musical tasks
Speaker 1: like keep a beat or tell notes apart or sing together.
Speaker 1: But whether they can appreciate music might depend whether they
Speaker 1: can even hear the sounds in that music and what
Speaker 1: their life experience has been with those sounds. It's just
Speaker 1: like how we don't necessarily appreciate a bird song, or
Speaker 1: how some of us don't like heavy metal or country
Speaker 1: music or music from another culture. All right, I'll leave
Speaker 1: you with the image a man with a guitar in
Speaker 1: a field playing music to an eight foot tall bird.
Speaker 1: Here's Plumes singing a song. Hey road to an Ostrich.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, See you next time you've been
Speaker 1: listening to science Stuffduction of iHeartRadio Bringing the produced by
Speaker 1: me or hitch Ham prendedate by Rose Seguda, executive producer
Speaker 1: Jerry Rowland, and audio engineer and mixer Kasey Pecrom. You
Speaker 1: can follow me on social media. Just search for PhD
Speaker 1: Comics and the name of your favorite platform. Be sure
Speaker 1: to subscribe to sign stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts, and please tell your friends.
Speaker 1: We'll be back next Wednesday with another episode. All right, today,
Speaker 1: I'm singing for Chloe the Dog and Mango the Cat. Chloe,
Speaker 1: you Mango, Here we go. It had to be. It
Speaker 1: had to be. I wandered averund fine, elly fan soundbody
Speaker 1: who's yeah? I don't think they care. You don't seem
Speaker 1: that impressed. What are the animals doing?
Speaker 2: What was the Mango?
Speaker 1: The cat went behind you and we started just kind
Speaker 1: of like laying out and stretching out, and so I
Speaker 1: think he was definitely listening.
Speaker 3: For sure, he comes and listens when I played the guitar.
Speaker 3: She won't really hang out with me in here, but
Speaker 3: he will all come and.
Speaker 2: Play the guitar and he'll sit on the couch or
Speaker 2: he'll just lay on the carpet next to me
Speaker 1: And he'll just hang out so he does that her
Speaker 1: not so much, but he definitely does