A recent study into the audio preferences of the average cat has found that those funky felines don’t appreciate you leaving the radio turned on all day when you leave the house – although the research failed to address what happens when you move the dial to 106 – 108 on the FM frequency.
Instead, the typical cat’s taste in music takes in the sort of smooth easy listening you’d expect to find in the alarm tones on your phone.
On today’s Moncrieff, Sean will be talking to American musician David Teie, who composes music for cats. Tune in live today at 2.15pm to hear what it takes to break into the feline music scene: http://www.newstalk.com/player/
But what does music produced specifically for cats actually sound like? Here’s a sample of Mr Teie’s most famous piece, Spooky’s Ditty:
If you think that the music has a certain purring quality, that’s exactly what Teie and psychologists at the University of Wisconsin were hoping for. Their new study, published in Applied Animal Behavioral Science, suggests that house cats prefer music which is composed as ‘species-specific’, with the tempos and frequencies found in their own innate forms of communication written into the melody.
As such, the music attempts to match and allude to the rhythmic and tonal qualities of purring or the sound of a kitten suckling.
"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," write study authors Charles Snowdon and Megan Savage.
Spook’s Ditty was proven to be a hit with the kitties, with the majority of the 47 cats tested appearing to prefer the cat-specific music to classical pieces written with the human ear in mind. The cats were observed purring, rubbing against the speakers and turning their attention towards the source of the music when David Teie’s compositions were playing.
The music is also written to influence the mood of cats, with the following piece, Cozmo’s Air, written to whip up your cat’s mood with chirping sounds to remind them of birds:
The University of Wisconsin study shows that “species-appropriate music is more likely to benefit animals than human music” and suggests “novel and more appropriate ways for using music as auditory enrichment for nonhuman animals.”
Anyone wishing to treat their mog to an afternoon of musical delight can purchase the music from David Teie’s website.
