Do animals "like" music? Do any "understand" it?

I guess I was trying to find a way to ask a singular question but had to break it up into two.

You see birds “head-banging” to heavy metal. Is the bird “head-banging” rhythmically to the music because it enjoys doing so? Is it just weird that dogs and cats seem to enjoy music, (or are we projecting that they do?) Would more intelligent animals understand it as an “Art Form”? Perhaps able to compose arranged melodies themselves?

Thanks

Not only do birds “dance” (is it to the music or just a learned response from their owner?) but more significantly some bird’s song is very musical by our own standards. Given that the song is often a mating call it would be fair to deduce that the other birds find the calls pleasing. Is it pleasing in the same way music is to us or is it just another learned response? Are crows tone deaf? Paging Colibri.

Given that they could fly off if they didn’t like the sounds, it’s reasonable to deduce that they do. As for understanding… How would we know? Do humans understand it?

I bet someone has wired up animal brains to see what goes on when they hear different sounds.

If my dog is any indication I think he does.

When I go play my guitar he’ll hop on the couch near me and lay there. I’m playing my electric guitar and pretty loud from my tube amp.

Is he listening? He must be because when I make a mistake he’ll look up like WTF?

Our dog used to be sung a lullaby before bed by my wife. As the previous poster noted, if she heard a sour note she’d harrumph. If she heard a different song, she’d harrumph. She only liked one song. And my wife had to sing it several times, because she’d paw her after she finished until she started singing again.

Way back when I was playing LPs, one of my cats would often sit there listening. But when there was an extraneous sound, due to small defect in the medium, he’d visibly cringe. He could obviously tell the difference between music and noise.

This article was what got me thinking about it.

My cat seems to like people music more…

I doubt that birds like music for the reasons it sounds musical to us. Some bird’s songs sound musical to us, and some bird’s songs are a screeching cacophony, but I’m sure they sound equally pleasing to birds of the same species.

To the extent that a human musical piece mimics elements of a species’ song, it might be pleasing to members of that species. But nails scraping on a blackboard might sound like a symphony to others.

In short, there’s no reason to expect that what sounds good to us is going to sound good to other species.

There is a video called " Happy Dancing Dog Cannot Contain Himself When Crossing Paths With Street Musicians. " It show a dog dancing to the music , I can’t post the link b/c it on facebook . Someone send this to me in an email and
the dog really has ‘happy paws’ !

Just anecdote – my cat listens to me play ukulele and sing all the time, but there’s not much indication that she enjoys it. My suspicion is that she hangs out while I’m playing because I pet her between songs. My former cat Socks (RIP) seemed to like it, especially when I played crunchy electric uke through my amplifier. When I started playing, he would come to the music room and stay. My girlfriend’s cat, though, seems like a real fan of music and not only comes to listen to me play, but looks right at me while I play. She also will pluck the ukulele strings with her teeth and listen to the note resonate. This is the closest thing I’ve seen to a cat enjoying live music.

http://m.yourdailydish.com/dancing-dog-cannot-contain/
I found the dancing dog video I hope the link works , it’s really funny and cute !

The dog isn’t necessarily responding to the music, but the movements of the musicians. The question is is whether the dog would still spin around in response to recorded music. I suspect not.

tbh I’ve yet to observe that phenomenon but will certainly keep my peepers out for that.

Actually, a little ways into the vid, there were number of “doggie twirls” where the musicians were perfectly still (other than their moving hands, of course). So if those “hot dog moves” were done of their own accord, one could make the case that dog is indeed responding to the sounds of the music.

This critter seems to be having a good time:

Not really. The dog could just have been “trained” to respond to music by imitating the twirling movements of people. The only way to know a dog responding to music itself would be to test it with recordings, when it had not been exposed to people dancing to music before.

It’s very easy to project human responses onto animals. You would really need to test such responses in naive animals, that had not been exposed to people dancing or responding to music, to be sure that the animals were responding to music rather than socially imitating human responses to music.

One of my cats seems to hate music, or at least the music I listen to; she leaves the room as soon as it comes on and doesn’t return until it’s off. Her brother may not like it either but he is too lazy to get up and leave. I don’t think I have ever had a cat that seemed to like music.

But if that’s just speculation, then the dog could just as easily have not been trained, and did it naturally - we’ll never know.

This appears to be already borne out by posts from Arrendejo, panache45, adaher, and sigman.

Not much for Occam’s Razor, are you? Scientifically speaking, the simplest explanation is that the dog is merely mimicking the movements of humans, since we know that dogs do this. On the other hand, as far as I know there are no scientific studies showing that dog innately respond to music as music (in contrast to sounds that humans would not consider to be music). I would therefore consider the first to be the most likely hypothesis unless stronger evidence for the latter were available.

Anecdotes are not good evidence, particularly ones so vague as those. adaher says that the dog only liked one song, which does not suggest that it liked music in general. As for recognizing bad notes or mistakes, the dog or cat could be simply responding to the reaction of the human.

Pet animals are keenly aware of the reactions of humans and respond to them. You many not even be aware that you are giving the animal a signal, as in the case of Clever Hans, a horse that gave the impression it was solving arithmetic problems by picking up the involuntary reactions of human observers.

People are very prone to project their own feelings and responses onto animals. In the absence of controlled studies, I would discount the likelihood that animals respond to human music as music (as opposed to other categories of sound that we would not classify as music).

I’m not saying that my dog was enjoying music or understand music but it could be pleasant tones to him. Heck I got good tones from my tube amp with NOS tubes (they make a big difference compared to new stock) that I drown myself in it.

It was an interruption in a flow of tones when I made a mistake that it jarred both me and my dog.

When my dog looked at me like that I said shuddap ya mutt! :stuck_out_tongue:

Like and dislike. My canary Groc loved old fashioned Rock and Roll, competing mightily with Mr. Presley or Mr. Berry, but there were other songs that would see him standing on the floor of the cage looking like he’d lost his best friend. Bouncy music -> bouncy canary; solemn, slow music without a heavy rythm section -> forlorn canary (something slow and solemn but on the drums would have him trying to come up with a melody). Was it a social response? No idea, but it was a response.

If I am listening to something with a lot of bass my cat will go to great lengths to place his head against my ear to share my earbud, he doesn’t seem to have any interest in music via speakers. I figure it reminds him of maternal purring or something, he is all about the bass, no treble.