ANIMAL RAGAS - PART I

PL.READ ALSO-PART II (CLICK HERE)

It was a beautiful hill station where I lived for sometime - the Nilgiris or Blue Mountains is a veritable fairyland. There were cloud-kissing peaks, dense forests, rushing streams, undulating emerald green plains, sudden drops, valleys and glades.

Once I was sitting along with my wife and my cute little daughter and was enjoying  a T.V movie , with full of warmth and thrill. 

It was an old wooden house surrounded by thick pine trees. We could here the terrific swaying sound of the those trees. 

It had started raining outside  …Thunders  broke the silence of the night.

We were seriously watching  the movie . the sounds of showers stopped for some time.

I could hear the barks and ribbit of frogs outside. The movie dragged us into it. The story was of a lady who transforms herself as a  snake and takes a revenge against the betrayer. The villan brings a snake charmer and the snake music was on … to catch her in a snake form to put her into a basket. 

My wife said “please reduce the sound. I'm afraid  real snakes  may be lured by these sounds and they might come inside our home’’

I was laughing at her and told her “ Don’t worry snakes are deaf and they can’t  EVEN hear our T.V  music.

My daughter was asking me “ Papa ,then why the snake is moving and dancing for the music of the charmer.?”

“My dear”,I said “ the snake is focused to the movement of the flute and see the eye contact ,the snake charmer is also careful to avoid her bite ” and I reiterated that snakes are deaf and they only react to vibrations.

They were thrilled.  One should experience such lovable movements.

I just recalled the memories of my life before  I share with you about 

                              – Animals  vs  Music.

Do Animals Have an Innate Sense of Music?      

Do animals Love or Appreciate music? 
Or they only feel a sound or noise?

Can music drag animals together?  

I was taught about the interesting story of the bagpiper who could drag out the rats, and there were days  I used to get immersed in my gradma’s stories about a Hindu mythology where lord Krishna made animals to come along with him by playing a flute. 

Will it be true with animals?

Sounding good?   That’s interesting!

First, Let us see some Science of Music.

A sound is measured as db- (decible) like what we use the words like litres,centimeters,gallon.

While whispering sounds at 30db,  a sound below 20 decible can't be heard by human ears (but rat can hear) and, a  normal conversation (at 3-5 feet) happens at 60-70db.

It is discovered that those sounds and music which are in between 70 to 90 db and could influence the functioning of life organs. Not that only the human mind get relaxed but it is proved that when these songs are played in the early morning hours even cows give more milk yield and plants grow better.

Our women are aware of the right lullaby which is endowed with a certain rhythm, pitch, intensity and purpose, to make the infant sleep. READ MORE .

Coming back to our animals , I have heard my friends saying that whenever they play a guitar or mettalica their pets run out of them, but I have also heard some others  saying that whenever they  listen and view  classical music performance in their T.V, their pets love to sit with them.

Different species have different reaction to music due to their  significant difference in their brain structure and especially at their cerebral cortex, even  among dogs and cats. A cat's brain is more similar to a human brain than that of a dog, 

Pet Acoustics experts  claim that “music soothes the savage beast,” and there are certain sounds that can actually bring discomfort to some animals because the frequencies are out of their normal comfort range, even if our human ears cannot detect them.

Fish exposed to classical music were found to have much higher growth rates than those that were not. Studies on dogs which have shown that dogs exposed to classical music were less stressed. Also, apparently cows are more happy to be milked if classical music is played in the milking parlour. A lot of experments have shown the various primate species are calmer when played certain types of music, but more stressed when played heavy metal music. 

"Monkeys don’t care much for human music, but apparently they will groove to their own beat.

Previous experiments have shown that tamarin Monkeys prefer silence to Mozart, and they don’t respond emotionally to human music the way people do. But when a psychologist and a musician collaborated to compose music based on the pitch, tone and tempo of tamarin calls, they discovered that the species-specific music significantly affected monkey behavior and emotional response."

Do you want to hear the HAPPY / FEARFUL MONKEY MUSIC 
- Hear from this site.
  Monkeys Don’t Go For Music — Unless It’s Made for Them

Some experiments made  an amazing sight to see a huge field with an apparently small amount of cows in it becoming an obviously large amount of cows gathering in a tight circle around a musician, once with a solo played on a horn and once with music consisting of a accordion,melodian and drums.

In 1909, an article was published in The New York Times titled "Effects of Music Upon Animals of the Zoo." The publication described the effect music had on varying species found in the Bronx Zoo, including: Reptiles, Birds, Primates, Elephants and Lions.

A hundred years later, the subject is still fascinating …

Bye! I will come back …

ENJOY: BONUS VIDEO - CAT PLAYING PIANO !

ANIMAL RAGAS-PART II (CLICK HERE)