I was always wondering how can dog ,cat or parrot sleep, while in the same room
TV or stereo set is playing music very loudly.Most animals somehow don’t mind noise but most humans on the other hand can 't stand it.How come?
Not to hijack, but I have a similar question that I’d rather not start a new thread about.
How do my cats tell the difference between sounds coming from my surround sound system and sounds that emit elsewhere. For instance, I can be watching Matrix and the cats won’t blink an eye during the gun fights, but if I smack the drapes by mistake they freak out. It seems they can even tell the difference between birds on the TV and birds chirping outside.
I was wondering that, too. I suspect they’re part of the same phenomenon.
Why is it that my cat freaks out and perks up if she hears someone talking in the hallway, but if I have talk radio on, she doesn’t react as though there are people in the apartment.
Although, one time she freaked out due to surround sound. I was watching “signs,” and there’s a part when the a bunch of ruslting insect-like noises come out of the cornfield, wildly panning around the surround sound. She FREAKED OUT and took off.
Maybe it’s because the noises made by televisions and stereos simply aren’t designed to interest their little minds. A human is distracted because s/he wants to follow the conversation, the story, or the line of the music. Maybe it’s irrelevant to an animal.
I don’t know the definite answer to this (not OP), but I suspect most animals rely on sound outside the “wavelength” of human ears. I know of one dog who got terribly scared every time the train passed by. But when the owner recorded the sound and played it on the stero the dog didn’t even blink. My dog has become uncomfortable with the sound of a firing gun after he was (unintentially) left alone on a New Years Eve a couple of years ago, but he don’t mind gun battles on the TV.
As for the OP, I doubt animals are actually sleeping when the TV/stero is cranked up, more like resting?
Back in the days before CDs, my cats would respond to any little crackle or pop on an LP, but never to the music (unless it contained things like cannons or bird sounds). Somehow, they knew the difference between music and noise. I don’t think it had to do with sound frequencies, since instruments and noise both come in a wide range of frequencies.
Another anecdote.
I was with my wife, getting a caffeine fix at the Starbucks at Fair Oaks and California in Pasadena, a very busy intersection with constant traffic during business hours. We were sitting outside on the patio, where they had music pumped out via those little Bose outdoor speakers, mounted under the eave of the stucco overhang above their doorway.
The music was blaring. Annoyingly blaring. And it had to be, just to be heard over the traffic, which was also annoyingly loud.
And above each speaker was a sparrow’s nest. They didn’t seem to mind at all.
(As for pets, my cat hates it when I play the TV or stereo too loud. He leaves the room like a grumpy old man. Because he is a grumpy old man. So I think the answer is, “they are aware, but simply don’t care. Usually.”)
Well, the point is that all common sound systems have a limited ability to reproduce sounds. Sounds at high and low frequencies aren’t processed. On CDs such sounds aren’t available at all because of the limitations of the CD format.