Sometimes, words are inadequate. People say a picture is worth a thousand words, and a video is worth… well, often a great deal more. Add in music and animals, and there really isn’t much more to be said.
Take this short video, for example, of a dog named Maple who loves guitar music and her human.
Cats are intelligent, affectionate creatures who love music, too. It’s readily apparent from this video that felines find music soothing.
There are a surprisingly large number of videos out there featuring cows enjoying music. I watched a bunch of them so you don’t have to. They’re all very similar insofar as the cows demonstrate unexpected curiosity, intelligence, and possibly music appreciation. And the little girl playing accordion here is adorable.
Odelle Morshuis attempts to entertain a flock of sheep in a field in New Zealand. It doesn’t appear that the sheep are as interested in the music as they are in eating the piano. From this we might conclude that sheep are possibly not as intelligent as cows.
Giraffes at the Denver Zoo have mixed emotions about a string quartet from the Colorado Symphony. I almost didn’t include this due to the distracting talking and breaks from the music, but the giraffes are such beautiful creatures, I made an exception.
The next video was the inspiration for this Night Owl. Paul Barton, a former concert pianist from Yorkshire, UK, now plays piano at a sanctuary in Thailand for “old, injured, handicapped logging and street elephants”. Here he soothes an 61-year-old who lost his right tusk and right eye in a logging accident.
Paul’s kindness and affection for elephants is undeniable. The intelligence and appreciation demonstrated by the elephants is obvious.
Paul plays Bach for an elephant that has been blind most of her life. She moves slow, but other than that i’d have never guessed she couldn’t see as she walked away after the music ended.
Mr. Barton has several other videos on his YouTube channel of elephants enjoying his music. If you liked these, you’ll appreciate the others. I nearly included a quartet of pachyderms munching on “popcorn” while Paul played for them, but it was a little too long (and it wasn’t really popcorn).
To close, because I’m in an elephant-admiring mood, here’s Henri Mancini’s Baby Elephant Walk from the film Hatari! (1962).
Question of the night: What animal would you like to have as a pet, other than a cat, dog, or any species you have had before?