Zoomusicology

Zoomusicology (

Zoomusicology is a separate field from ethnomusicology, the study of human music.

Zoomusicologists in a wide range of fields including

Composer David Sulzer, under the name David Soldier and the Thai Elephant Orchestra, built giant percussion instruments for the elephants at the National Elephant Institute at Lampang to play, with minimal human direction.

Composers have long evoked or imitated animal sounds in compositions, including Antonio Vivaldi's The Four Seasons (Vivaldi) (1720), Jean-Philippe Rameau's The Hen (1728), Camille Saint-Saëns's The Carnival of the Animals (1886), Jean Sibelius's The Swan of Tuonela (1895), Frederick Delius's On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring (1912), Ralph Vaughan Williams's The Lark Ascending (Vaughan Williams) (1914), Ottorino Respighi's Pines of Rome (1924) and The Birds (1928), Ferde Grofé's Grand Canyon Suite (1931), Olivier Messiaen's Catalogue of the Birds (1956–58), George Crumb's Vox Balaenae (Voice of the Whale) (1971), and Pauline Oliveros's El Relicario de los Animales (1977).^[14]

Some modern composers have included recordings of animals in their scores, including

In 1960 American engineer Jim Fassett put together an album of slowed-down and re-arranged bird songs called Symphony of the Birds.

The most well-known form of music found in non-human animals is

Several species of birds can mimic the songs of other birds, or even mechanical sounds. These include, with varying degrees of success, starlings, mockingbirds, thrashers, crows and ravens, parrots, myna birds, blue jays,^[21] lyrebirds, Lawrence's thrushes, Acrocephalus, marsh warblers, and others.^[22] Mozart kept a starling that could mimic some of his music.^[23][24]

Functions and effects of music on animals

Mammals

Snowden and Teie performed an experiment on Cotton-top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus) to determine if music would lead to behavioural changes, and whether music made by other species would elicit similar behavioural responses as the music of one's own species.^[25] This experiment involved two separate categories of music - one was affiliation-based, the other was fear/threat-based music. Within the two categories, the experimenter varied whether the music was produced by humans or tamarins.^[25] During the experiment, a baseline behaviour measurement was established, proceeded by the experimental condition, which was a piece of music that was played for 30 seconds. Following this, behaviour was analyzed for a total of five minutes. This analysis was made by an observer who was unaware of the true hypothesis of the experiment, and simply noted different behaviours which they had witnessed.^[25] The experimenters found that the tamarins altered their behaviour specifically when listening to tamarin music. For example, when music from the affiliation condition was played, the behavioural response of the tamarins involved a decrease in overall movement and an increase in both social and foraging behaviour.^[25] This contrasted the behaviour observed when the fear/threat based music was played. During this condition, the tamarins were more likely to move around and show anxiety-based behaviour, as well as, an increase in social behaviour similar to that seen in the affiliation condition. Although the tamarins did not show behavioural changes to human music as clearly as they did to their species-specific music, there was some behavioural change.^[25] The tamarins showed decreased movement when listening to human fear/threat based music and a decrease in anxious behaviour when listening to human affiliation music.

Insects

One potential barrier in the study of zoomusicology is that there are some forms of music produced by various animals that humans are incapable of hearing.

Auditory enrichment and therapeutic effects of music on animals

Cats

David Teie has created two albums of music for cats. Researchers Snowdon and Savage found that domestic cats that showed little interest in human music are more interested in and responsive to Teie's music that was composed with species-appropriate features relevant to cats. The authors of a clinical study of Teie's music for cats in veterinary physical examinations concluded that cat-specific music may benefit cats by decreasing the stress levels and increasing the quality of care in veterinary clinical settings. They found that tranquil behaviors can be achieved in a veterinary clinical setting with the introduction of cat-specific music.^[27]

Cows

In an unpublished study at the University of Leicester, Liam MacKenzie and Adrian North found that playing music for dairy cows had an effect on the amount of milk that they produced.^[28] Over a nine-week period, dairy cows were exposed to fast (> 120 BPM), slow (< 100 BPM), and no music. Music was played for the cows 12 hours a day from 5 AM to 5 PM.^[28] The study found that cows exposed to slow music, like R.E.M.'s "Everybody Hurts" or Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, produced 3% more milk than cows that were exposed to fast music, like "Pumping on your Stereo" by Supergrass and "Size of a Cow" by Wonderstuff.^[28] Bovine milk production has long been thought to be affected by exposure to music. Some farmers expose their cows to music to aid in milk production.^[28][29]

Dogs

Decreased stress levels have been observed in kennelled dogs that were exposed to classical music, but rapid habituation was also observed.^[30] In a 2017 follow up study, kennelled dogs were exposed to five different genres of music including soft rock, Motown, pop, reggae, and classical in order to determine whether or not increased variety of music could reduce habituation.^[30] The study found the heart rate variability, which indicates a decreased stress level, was significantly higher when the dogs were played reggae and soft rock, but the other three genres had a similar but less pronounced effect. In addition, the dogs were much more likely to lie down rather than stand while the music was being played.^[30] The study suggested that the increased variety of music decreased habituation that was present when playing exclusively classical music, though the dogs responded best when exposed to reggae and soft rock.^[30]

See also

• Animal communication
• Animal echolocation
• Bioacoustics
• Biomusic
• Biophony
• List of animal sounds
• Nora (cat)
• Soundscape ecology
• Vocal learning

References