The Family Times March 2018

pet pages

Does Your Cat Have Musical Taste? We know that dogs love to howl along to classical tunes, and listen to reggae. But what about our feline friends? Unfortunately, cats may not appreciate music like us humans do. That means they these furry friends will not be jamming out to Taylor Swift anytime soon. However, turn on some species-specific music, and they will be all for it. Cats love specie-specific music, and it has been tested multiple times by researchers. University ofWisconsin psychologists and study authors, Megan Savage and Charles Snowdon state that, ¨We have developed a theoretical framework that hypothesizes that in order for music to be effective with other species, it must be in the frequency range and with similar tempos to those used in natural communication by each species.¨ Cats will respond to music that correlates with how animals communicate, and that is exactly why they do not respond to human music. One of the head researchers on the case, Snowdon, worked directly with a composer to test out the theory. They worked with a group of cats and played them human, and specie-specific music. When the music that we all listen to came on, there were no reactions from the cats and they seemed like they could really care less. But, when the music targeted towards cats came on, they were purring against the speakers, absolutely delighted with what they were hearing. The music these cats listened to were full of replicated purrs and meows to create one original song.

While we all hope that cats will appreciate the music that we listen to, but unfortunately they have no interest in Beyoncé or Taylor Swift. These feline specific tunes however, will be sure to put them in a good mood all day long.

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Family Times

MARCH 2018