When you hit the road together with your furry friends, you may want to pass the time or soothe your driving nerves by cranking up the music and sing along. On occasion, your furry friend may even yell with you. But is your pet singing along? Are they just yelling? Or could they be asking to stop playing your music altogether? Does your pet enjoy your road trip music as much as we think will, to some part, be a matter of what we play. But studies show they may not appreciate our taste in music as much as we’d like them to.
The issue that animals have with music is about the pitch. Music for humans is at a proper pitch, but not for our pets. Our furry friends do better when music is within frequencies that work for their hearing range. If the sound being produced from the radio fall out of those ranges, our pets can’t figure out what the sounds are. In some cases, the sound comes off as muddled; other times, the sound can hurt their ears. That howling they do along with us most likely isn’t for a duet or a sign of appreciation—it means they want us to stop.
Humans like music that falls into their acoustic and vocal ranges and has a tempo similar to our heartbeats. Animals are not different from us in that regard. But it should also come as no surprise that those ranges and heart rates are different in our pets—it makes human music less appealing. Depending upon the pitch of the music, our music is unenjoyable to our pets.
Does this mean we shouldn’t play music around our pets? Not at all! It just means that we have to play songs they can hear. Studies have shown that cats especially enjoy music that is in the proper range of their hearing.
For pets to fully enjoy music, the song should be tailored for pet ears.
PetTravelCenter (pettravelcenter.com)
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin worked with a composer to study what music and ranges are appealing to animals. What they found was that when the right pitch was used, pets love music. In their study, they played a selection of songs to 47 cats. Three of those songs were created just for cats, and two were classical songs by Bach and Fauré. The song that was closest to the pitch that works for cats got a positive response from the surveyed felines. That song used ranges and tempos that are closer to what a cat would use to communicate. Much like people, felines needed music that was the right pitch for their ears, their vocal range, and in line with their body tempos.
Not only are our pets not fans of our music choices, but they also won’t always love the volume that we play it at. This does not bode well for road trips since humans tend to crank the volume when driving.
There is not a great deal of research on the impact of loud music on our animals. But the information we do have shows that by and large, our animals don’t like it. If you have a cat, you already know that sudden loud noises send them running. For many, they will hide until the loud noise stops. Dogs aren’t much different. Many will cower or hide, and some will cry from fright.
Loud pulsating music, especially in a confined space like a car, will upset many animals.
PetTravelCenter (pettravelcenter.com)
This doesn’t mean that you can’t play music when taking a trip with your pets; it just means you have to keep the volume at a reasonable level.
The answer to the question “does your pet enjoy your road trip music” would be: not really. Human music isn’t created with the right tempo, pitch, or vocal range for our pets. Some songs we listen to could actually hurt their ears. However, pets DO enjoy music; you just have to play music custom made for them. When you find tunes that meet the specifics for your pet’s ears, they will gladly enjoy some tunes for the road trip. Just make sure not to play any music too loud; they won’t like that no matter what kind of music you play.
