Instances of the Effects of Musical Sounds on Animals

Abstract

SOME years ago I observed in a casual way the effect of musical sounds upon certain animals, and was inclined to pursue the inquiry and endeavor to learn by careful experiment through the medium of music how far or in what degree there might exist between man and certain animals that fellow-feeling which makes the whole world kin. The fraternal relation between dog and man, whether the latter be civilized or savage, is too well known to require remark. So, too, with other animals which man has domesticated, notably the horse and cat. Some four or five years ago, at a meeting of the Biological Section of the British Association, Sir John Lubbock read some interesting notes on the intelligence of the dog. The man and the dog he said, have lived together in more or less intimate association for many thousands of years, and yet it must be confessed that they know comparatively little of one another. That the dog is a loyal, true, and affectionate friend must be gratefully admitted, but when we come to consider the psychical nature of the animal, the limits of our knowledge are almost immediately reached. I have elsewhere suggested that this arises very much from the fact that hitherto we have tried to teach animals rather than to learn from them-to convey our ideas to them rather than to devise any language or code of signals by which they might communicate theirs to us. So it occurred to me that we might learn something of the animals around and about us,-add somewhat to the stock of knowledge, and get many interesting hints, some useful and some curious, as to their inner nature,-by the aid of music or musical sounds, by observing the effect of such sounds upon them.