Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1913-02-02
MUSICAL CULTURE AMONG ANIMALS

| A LII animals, with few exceptions, seem
sensible to musical rhythm and among
those whose hearing apparatus is highly de-
veloped the sensibiity to discords is more
keen than among unmusical humans. So
| far as experiment shows all animals have
perfect sense of pitch, and they cannot be
| taught, like their two-legged brethren, to &C
quire taste for dissonances. Observation
also shows that the greater an animals
sagacity, the more amenable it is to training,
the greater will be its musical aptitude.
Monkeys, however, are a curious excep-
| ton to this rule. They are not insensible to
music. When listening to bright, lively
tune, they will chatter, grimace, and frolic,
and give every indication of enjoyment. But
the Capering of the organ grinders monkey
to its masters dance tunes represents the
highest development of simian musical in
telligence. Despite their marvellous imita-
tive powers along other lines, they show
little musical aptitude. 1t might be interest
ing to know whether this is due to lack of
seriousness of character or to inability to
concentrate their interest. The fact remains
that while the monkey can be taught to eat
and drink. dress itself, ride a bicycle, smoke
a cigarette. and do innumerable other stunts
like human being, it shows no evidence of
musical taste.
nCGS, on the contrary, closest of all ami
- mails to man in his domestic life, evince
the keenest musical susceptibility. Indeed. it
might we'll be held that the dog that dis
plays no liking for music is a vicious char
acter. Musical experiments with dogs have
been carried on extensively, and the results
are sufficient to prove that they are not only
able to recognize melodies but to identify
each Individual note in the diatonic scale.
The existence of this power for differentia-
ting Individual tones was shown by the in
tcrcsting experiments of DR.. Otto kalisChe
of Berlin. His plan was to take one tone of
the scale and identify it for the dog as a
food tone that IS, whenever the tone was
sounded, the dog was made to understand
that he could eat piece of meat placed be-
fore him. Then the other eight tones in the
scale were sounded in turn and he was made
to understand that they were prohibition
tones in other words, he was not to eat
when they were sounded apart from the
food tone" Five minutes instruction a
day for three days proved ample in every
instance to train dog to learn the scale.
And so keen was the sense of tone shown
that the meat would remain untouched when
a scmitOne above or below the food tone"
was sounded or the tone would be recog-
nizcd when sounded in a complex chord or
even in dissonance that made its detection
impossible to the human ear. The dogs
showed moreover, little confusion when the
food tone" was changed on them from
time to time.
When a deep, low tone is sounded on a
stringed instrument, dog will cock its ears,
open its mouth, and listen attentively. If
a melancholy minor air is played it is pretty
certain that Fido will howl piteously; but
when the player modulates into a major
mode and the piece takes on lively char
actcr. the animal distress will disappear in
stantly. \ lively tune will make a dog frisk
about; but when the rhythm is made too
speedy he will bark his displeasure like a
| true critic
All have seen at vaudeville the dog that
will pick out the American flag when the
band plays Yankee Doodle" the Union
Jack when God Save the King" strikes up,
or the German flag when he hears the tune
Die Yacht am Rhine. This shows the
dogs ability to recognize melody. In all
animal acts great care is used to play the
same music all the time. Whether the per-
formers are dogs or other animals, once they
have grown accustomed to working to GER
tain rhythms, they can work to no Others
To change the music would bring the act to
certain disaster. The same thing holds true
in great measure for human acrobats and