Week 9 blog. Animals and Music. By Cynthia Dempster

I have wanted for a long time to confess to my comrades that I sing to animals. Animals like to listen to me sing. I wish people did. I have noticed that squirrels respond to higher pitched songs. They will be leaping merrily around on the boughs and when I start singing, they stop their acrobatics and stare at me. Frequently, they lie down on the bough and appear to give me their full attention. If I lower the pitch of the song, they become distracted and leap away in search of acorns. High pitched music though is better than food.

Now there was a family of foxes living in the woods behind the house I have just moved out of. I used to sit in the woods and sing to the baby foxes. When I sang, the fox children ran around a tree and jumped in the air. They did not like it when I sang the Hallelujah chorus. That was too sophisticated for them. They LOVED "You are my sunshine, my only sunshine." This song made their foxy hearts beat fast and foxily. They danced. They jumped up and down, apparently delighting in the song.

Now, beavers are dignified creatures. They bear the weight of being a symbol of Canada. Perhaps, beavers also symbolize Canadians. I haven' thought about this. I'll have to look more closely at what a Canadian is like. However, I know for a fact, an absolute fact, that the beaver at my cottage would stop his swimming journey and paddle up to me when I sang "Oh, Canada." It's true.

I visited a wild life centre. I started to sing to an wolf who was hiding at the back of his enclosure. I decided to start with a simple connection. I tried high E. It didn't work. I sang a low pitch, D below middle C. The wolf didn't like it. I then sang a pitch that was between D and E above middle C. The wolf walked directly to the front of the enclosure as if he had been called there by me. The attendant was amazed. She said the wolf was very retiring. She had never seen him come to the front of the enclosure before.

Now, it seems to me, there is an aspect of research in all this. I think, however, that I do not want to transform these lovely experiences in to a formal research project. I would rather not analyze or propose theories about animals and music. Let it be mysterious.