# do animals "get" music? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 17, 2010, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-animals-get-music/564543 "2010-12-17T19:05:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Enola\_Straight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dec6dc/32.png) [@Enola\_Straight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enola_Straight)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2010, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-animals-get-music/564543/1 "2010-12-17T19:05:54Z")
Can dogs, cats, birds, etc understand the difference between music and background noise? Could a fox or raccoon recognize if a musical passage suddenly had a misplaced beat or a sour note…something we would know as out of place, even though we didn’t hear this particular passage before? ---
**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2010, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-animals-get-music/564543/2 "2010-12-17T20:13:48Z")
The short answer is that some non-human primates can appreciate music, but not the same pieces that we would. From [here](http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/monkeymusic/): > [@](#): > > Monkeys don’t care much for human music, but apparently they will groove to their own beat. > > Previous experiments have shown that tamarin monkeys prefer silence to Mozart, and they don’t respond emotionally to human music the way people do. But when a psychologist and a musician collaborated to compose music based on the pitch, tone and tempo of tamarin calls, they discovered that the species-specific music significantly affected monkey behavior and emotional response. ---
**Author:** ![Intelligently\_Designed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/intelligently_designed/32/20957_2.png) [@Intelligently\_Designed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Intelligently_Designed)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2010, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-animals-get-music/564543/3 "2010-12-17T22:48:25Z")
Well, some people believe that music can be made [especially for cats](http://www.musicforcats.com/21-listen.htm). ---
**Author:** ![Swallowed\_My\_Cellphone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9d8465/32.png) [@Swallowed\_My\_Cellphone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Swallowed_My_Cellphone)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2010, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-animals-get-music/564543/4 "2010-12-17T22:58:50Z")
[Snow the Dancing Cockatoo](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_%28cockatoo%29) became teh subject of a study after he gained fame dancing away on YouTube. > [@](#): > > The results, published in the paper “Investigating the human-specificity of synchronization to music” showed that Snowball was capable of spontaneously dancing to human music and also that he could adjust his movements to match the tempo of the music (albeit to a limited extent), a behavior previously thought only to occur in humans. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2010, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-animals-get-music/564543/5 "2010-12-17T22:59:02Z")
I’ve seen cockatoos that [dance to music.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJOZp2ZftCw) ---
**Author:** ![kambuckta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/53a042/32.png) [@kambuckta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kambuckta)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2010, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-animals-get-music/564543/6 "2010-12-17T23:32:34Z")
My new pup howls when she hears the piano accordian, does that count? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![ladysorrowfree](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/dbc845/32.png) [@ladysorrowfree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ladysorrowfree)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2010, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-animals-get-music/564543/7 "2010-12-19T03:52:53Z")
My cats have a strong preference for either light classical music or a cappella vocals with mostly pure tones (think Chanticleer or Chanson). They also know what they don’t like. I had one cat that wailed and pawed at the stereo when I tried to listen to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Phantom of the Opera” soundtrack. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2010, 6:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-animals-get-music/564543/8 "2010-12-19T06:23:34Z")
Back when I was listening to LPs, my cats pricked up their ears whenever there was an audible scratch, or any other sound that wasn’t strictly music. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2010, 7:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-animals-get-music/564543/9 "2010-12-19T07:28:02Z")
> [@purplehaze2007](#): > > I had one cat that wailed and pawed at the stereo when I tried to listen to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Phantom of the Opera” soundtrack. You should try out a few of his other works. I’m sure your cat would _LOVE_… …Starlight Express.