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Has anyone trained a cat to do audio testing?

Inner Space

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Reposting from a different thread from last year:

I hesitate to tell this story, but ... 25 years ago we lived in England for a spell. We got a rescue mutt named Jenny. Our house was on a hill above a small market town with an ancient church. Its tower had bells of sufficient number and quality for what the English call "change ringing", which has each bell pealing in a mathematical sequence that can take 15 or 20 minutes to unwind. It's a complex and beautiful sound. Jenny loved it. She would stand on the back lawn, tilt her head, listen, and start howling along, in apparent ecstasy.

When we went back to America, I bought a CD of English Change Ringing, so Jenny wouldn't miss her fix. But nothing. No reaction at all. Until my La Scalas eventually came out of storage. One day I tried the bells again. Jenny tilted her head, listened, and started howling along, in total ecstasy. Klipsch La Scalas. Dogs know they're cool.
 

pozz

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IIRC animals like dogs and cats with a very wide range of hearing also have poorer frequency discrimination and it is unclear if they even process pitch in discrete narrowband chunks like humans do with notes. On the latter, @BDWoody once posted an anthropological article which asserted that a specific tribe in Bolivia does not perceive octaves. So it's not impossible that there are other things we take for granted, like organized tempo and rhythm perception, which fly by animals, or at least impress them only in a very broad sense.
 

Neddy

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One of my cats alerts and 'watches' some of these tracks:
https://www.musicforcats.com/
The others, not so much. Interesting, though.
My personal 'guess' is that cats respond to audio based heavily on what threats they've been exposed to early in life....they are really good at 'not getting bit' twice!
The one who responds 'nicely' to this music is the one who is terrified of thunder and firecrackers, and monster on the Big Screen (seriously - he runs and hides when he sees Big Scary Monsters up there!).
Go figure.
Mostly just happy to support a composer/musician:cool:
 

Robin L

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One of my cats [back in the seventies] loved classical music, would hang out with me playing Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms. Would leave in a huff when I played Santana.

Clio [a Somali] seems to like my guitar playing:

134283750_3733278566724373_7587351877756232851_n.jpg
 

egellings

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Music appreciation may be a purely human thing. Do birds interpret birdsong as music, or just messaging?
 

mhardy6647

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No, but, way back when, in college days (late 1970s) I had a black cat called The Bear.
She liked to listen to records with me...
except...
when I played Boston's eponymous (and first) LP.
She would leave the room.

I don't believe that her issue was with the music (although I never actually asked her -- mind you, she was an exceptionally intelligent cat).
Boston was, and is, a very bright, borderline shrill album -- at least in its original 12" LP morph.

That said, CAT scans were part of my audio troubleshooting armamentarium for many years, as I believe I've mentioned elswhere on this august forum.

Here, for example, we see Timmy the Timorous (erstwhile) Tomcat successfully diagnosing a failed woofer surround on a Pioneer HPM-1100 loudspeaker.
DSCN6215 by Mark Hardy, on Flickr

CAT scan unit Harpo.
P1030360 by Mark Hardy, on Flickr

CAT scan unit Zappa.
EV15TRXBflipside by Mark Hardy, on Flickr
 

Robin L

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Music appreciation may be a purely human thing. Do birds interpret birdsong as music, or just messaging?
I think they're essentially musical: recall a mynah bird [named "Bird"] that tried real hard to keep up with a Charlie Parker LP.

Then there's this:

 

DonH56

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Of course, after the CAT scan, you must do thorough Lab testing.

1616276618937.png
 

HiFidFan

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