Nature
PUBLISHED
If their music taste is anything to go by, dogs are super chilled.
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The study consisted of playing five different genres of music to a group of dogs through sound systems installed in kennels, including soft rock, Motown, pop, reggae, and classical. The researchers then monitored the dogs' stress levels by recording how much time they moved around, their heart rate, and other physiological changes.
“Overall, the response to different genres was mixed highlighting the possibility that like humans, our canine friends have their own individual music preferences,” study author Professor Neil Evans, from Glasgow University’s School of Veterinary Medicine, said in a statement.
However, both reggae and soft rock stuck out as the consistent favorite, with the dogs being notably more chilled out and expressing more positive behaviors when exposed to those genres.
"At present, both our Glasgow and Edinburgh centres are able to pipe music into their kennels," Gilly Mendes Ferreira, of the SPCA, told BBC News. "In the future, every centre will be able to offer our four-footed friends a canine-approved playlist, with the view to extending this research to other species in our care."
