[CAT] "Music Made for Cats Wins Feline Approval"

[rfmcdonald]

Discovery News' Jennifer Vargas writes about the interesting discoveries of some researchers that cats not only react well to music, but that it's possible to create music for cats in mind. Half-minute samples of some of the songs created are available here.

Music that incorporates everything from purrs to meow-like sounds is gaining feline fans, according to a new study that suggests cats enjoy tunes that are crafted just for them.

The study, which has been accepted for publication in the journal Applied Animal Behavioral Science, adds to the growing body of evidence that many animals respond favorably to species-specific music. This is music that takes into account a particular animal's favorite sounds, hearing range, commonly used tones and other factors.

"Here we found that cats showed orientation and approach behavior toward the speaker with the cat music, often rubbing against the speaker while the music was on," lead author Charles Snowdon of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, told Discovery News.

Snowdon and colleague Megan Savage worked with composer and musician David Teie, who created the cat-centric music.

"We looked at the natural vocalizations of cats and matched our music to the same frequency range, which is about an octave or more higher than human voices," Snowdon said. "We incorporated tempos that we thought cats would find interesting -- the tempo of purring in one piece and the tempo of suckling in another -- and since cats use lots of sliding frequencies in their calls, the cat music had many more sliding notes than the human music."

The researchers then played this music for 47 domestic cats in their homes with their owners present. As a comparison, Snowdon and his colleagues also played "human" music for the cats. This consisted of two pieces that have been highly rated as being "pleasing and affiliative to humans": Gabriel Fauré's Elegie and Johann Sebastian Bach's Air on a G String.