This Malaysian busker was about to call it day, as not many people gathered around to hear him sing. Just as he started to sing for fun, the cutest little audience showed up… A group of four 3 month old kittens came to show their support! “Suddenly, the kittens (3 months old) come and sit in front of him, he continued, it’s like [they] know his feeling and give him support,” the owner of the video wrote online. “The kittens be his audience till the end and he thanked the kittens for watching his performance.” The best part? At one point, the kittens started to bob their fuzzy little heads along with the beat! (Source) Music seems a more fundamentally human art form than most. It’s home to our most intimate emotions and has such a strong effect on our brain chemistry that it’s addictive. But it isn’t just humans that love music.
The science of music’s effect on animals and even plants reveals something startling: It’s not just an art form — it’s essentially a force of nature. Due in no small part to the frustration of being woken up by an early-rising bird, most of us write off all animal noise as merely irritating. Animals, on the other hand, are empathetic when they listen to cross-species music, and react with emotions and behavior eerily similar to our own. At dog kennels, researchers found that classical music reduced anxiety in the dogs, helping them sleep more and bark less. Many pet owners leave their home radios playing all day for the listening pleasure of their dogs and cats. Station choices vary. “We have a very human tendency to project onto our pets and assume that they will like what we like,” said Charles Snowdon, an authority on the musical preferences of animals. “People assume that if they like Mozart, their dog will like Mozart. If they like rock music, they say their dog prefers rock.”
