Music Benefits Animals, Too
by Steve Rees, Ret. RN, Harpist
Music has had many beneficial effects on humans. Each day, I receive comments on my YouTube channel about how people have been helped by the calming effects of the harp music videos that I offer. I was a bit surprised one day when I received a comment from one of my listeners that their dog had been calmed by my harp music
Another amazing report came sometime later from a friend that raised goats. She milked them to sell the milk and make various goat milk products. She told me that the goats were quite skittish and would often kick a half-filled bucket over wasting the milk that had already been collected. One day, she decided to play one of my CDs during the milking process. She reported that she hasn't lost a bucket of milk since. She said that the goats just settled down and ate calmly during the milking process – Total transformation.
One of the first things to remember about animals, especially dogs, is that their hearing
range is quite different than a human range. Humans range from 20 Hertz to about 20,000 Hertz. A dog's range is 40 to 65,000 Hertz. That means that a dog can hear high sounds that humans cannot hear. The sound is there but we cannot discern it because our ears cannot translate that fast of a vibration into a meaningful auditory signal to our brain, so it doesn't register as sound to us.
But a dog's ear can translate that high pitch of a sound into a usable auditory signal, therefore, identifying the sound. We can demonstrate that with the use of a dog whistle. When we blow on it, we don't hear anything, but a dog does hear and comes running, or maybe begins to howl.
We also notice that animals are more sensitive to sound than humans. For instance, a dog starts to bark when a car enters the property well ahead of when the human hears the car coming. Also, we note that a dog may run for hiding when thunder is sounding off, or howl when an instrument is being played such as a trumpet. They hear differently.