James
15-01-2010, 12:16 AM
In one of my previous posts I mentioned my interest in feline sensory skills. Although I have researched this subject in relation to human beings, the area of feline senses was new to me. What I did discover is that as with so many other skills, felines are extremely sophisticated little creatures.
Felines can pick up extremely high-frequency tones—about two octaves higher than those that humans can hear, and half an octave higher than those that dogs can hear. They can triangulate on the location of an individual sound by comparing the minute differences in its tone and arrival time at their two ears. An organ in the inner ear called the vestibular apparatus senses a cat's position in space and allows it to usually land on its feet when dropped.
Our beloved cat Dunkley was extremely interested in music and this prompted me to look at this area more closely and compare the findings with what I already know about human auditory sense.
In-common with most felines, Dunkley was more responsive to certain notes in the chromatic scale. The intervals between notes in the chromatic musical scale correspond to key human speech tones. These peaks allow us to recognise vowel sounds and may help explain why humans (and cats) appreciate certain tones as musical.
Researchers into music preferences expected to be able to map common voice modulation over commonly used scales, but the intervals were not the same. The team then turned to what are called 'formants'.
When an instrument produces a note, that note can be represented as a spectrum. Formants are the most important frequency components represented when an instrument, including the human voice box, generates a note. When a person speaks a vowel sound, it is those strongest pitches, or formants, that make the sound distinguishable from other vowel sounds. Analysis of spectra created by music and spoken vowels (the spectra were represented visually) revealed that 68 percent of the time, the same intervals that create the music deemed pleasing by humans across time and geography were also emphasised when people spoke vowel sounds.
The emphasised harmonics in human speech—the frequencies that harmonise and form what we recognise as a person speaking a vowel sound—are often the same as our chromatic musical intervals. In other words, the tones of music are actually embedded in our speech.
Cats respond with pleasure to familiar human speech and seem to prefer music which which corresponds with this common spectra. Dunkley was particularly fond of music that contained certain rhythmic patterns and frequency. She was especially responsive to recordings of me singing and she recognised my voice immediately, sitting as close to the floor-mounted speakers as possible.
I imagine that most cat servants here can relate interesting accounts of their cat(s) responses to certain sounds and it would be useful to draw up a list from contributors to this forum.All cats possess a highly developed suite of environmental sensors. This allows them to perceive the world differently (often more effectively) than humans.
Felines can pick up extremely high-frequency tones—about two octaves higher than those that humans can hear, and half an octave higher than those that dogs can hear. They can triangulate on the location of an individual sound by comparing the minute differences in its tone and arrival time at their two ears. An organ in the inner ear called the vestibular apparatus senses a cat's position in space and allows it to usually land on its feet when dropped.
Our beloved cat Dunkley was extremely interested in music and this prompted me to look at this area more closely and compare the findings with what I already know about human auditory sense.
In-common with most felines, Dunkley was more responsive to certain notes in the chromatic scale. The intervals between notes in the chromatic musical scale correspond to key human speech tones. These peaks allow us to recognise vowel sounds and may help explain why humans (and cats) appreciate certain tones as musical.
Researchers into music preferences expected to be able to map common voice modulation over commonly used scales, but the intervals were not the same. The team then turned to what are called 'formants'.
When an instrument produces a note, that note can be represented as a spectrum. Formants are the most important frequency components represented when an instrument, including the human voice box, generates a note. When a person speaks a vowel sound, it is those strongest pitches, or formants, that make the sound distinguishable from other vowel sounds. Analysis of spectra created by music and spoken vowels (the spectra were represented visually) revealed that 68 percent of the time, the same intervals that create the music deemed pleasing by humans across time and geography were also emphasised when people spoke vowel sounds.
The emphasised harmonics in human speech—the frequencies that harmonise and form what we recognise as a person speaking a vowel sound—are often the same as our chromatic musical intervals. In other words, the tones of music are actually embedded in our speech.
Cats respond with pleasure to familiar human speech and seem to prefer music which which corresponds with this common spectra. Dunkley was particularly fond of music that contained certain rhythmic patterns and frequency. She was especially responsive to recordings of me singing and she recognised my voice immediately, sitting as close to the floor-mounted speakers as possible.
I imagine that most cat servants here can relate interesting accounts of their cat(s) responses to certain sounds and it would be useful to draw up a list from contributors to this forum.All cats possess a highly developed suite of environmental sensors. This allows them to perceive the world differently (often more effectively) than humans.