BARTALK #20: Care (the podcast) Episode 3: Lilita Dunska Transcribed by Sarafina van Ast
[ music playing in the background ]
[ Yun ] Hi, my name is Yun,
[ Rae ] And my name is Rae.
[ Yun ] And we're the hosts of BARTALK.
[ Rae ] So BARTALK is a lecture performance and storytelling series that usually takes place in different bars in The Hague. Each event has its own theme where we feature four guests with different perspectives.
[ Yun ] The theme of the series is ‘care.’ And when we talk about care, it's often between humans. But we were kind of curious about the subject of interspecies care. Is it possible to do genuinely? So we're going to start off with a pet story from Rae.
[ Rae ] Okay, so for some context, I am from the bible belt of the US. I'm from Alabama. And when I was younger, my brother really wanted a dog, and my mom was super against it. So she said, Okay, if God wants you to have a dog, a dog will show up. So every night my brother prayed and prayed and prayed for a dog. And then one day, a dog showed up on our doorstep. And my brother begged my mom for us to keep the dog because the gods sent her to us. And so we called the dog Angel, because she was a gift from God.
[ Yun ] Yeah, wow. Your poor mom.
[ Rae ] Yeah.
[ Yun ] So yeah, we often put our animal friends on a pedestal, which is why we're curious about how care works in these kinds of relationships. We're happy to say that we know someone who can give us a little more insight into this subject.
[ Rae ] Our guest this week is Lilita Dunska. She is a sound engineer, producer and pre master's student at the Cognitive Musicology program at the University of Amsterdam. She is currently on a path to combine a lifelong passion for sound with the profound interest in cognitive sciences.
[ Yun ] One of the first research projects she's busy with explores human-animal music playing practices for non-human animals. This research covers the aspects of online community building through music playlists for pets, the trend of pet humanization, and also critical anthropomorphism. So just a quick note, anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions or intentions to non human entities. So for example, when we see a dog that looks like it's smiling as a human, would we assume that it's happy, even though it isn't necessarily,
[ Rae ] or maybe another example is dressing up your dog for Halloween.
[ Yun ] Exactly. Lots of big words that we're going to uncover in this episode.
[ Rae ] So let's give a really really warm welcome to Lilita.
[ music playing in the background ]
[ Yun ] So we're here in the studio with Lilita Dunska. Yeah, welcome, Lita.
[ LIlita ] Thank you. [ Yun ] Thanks for being here. We invited you because you were looking into humans playing music for animals. Can you tell us a little bit about this? And what is your background actually? And what brought you to this research?
[ Lilita ] Yeah, so in short, I'm researching why are people playing music for animals... by background on this is absolutely not related to the subject whatsoever, except for the word music itself. I spent a long time being trained as a classical pianist and afterwards, I studied sound engineering in music conservatory.
I have been always very fascinated with sound but also with cognitive sciences. And I very randomly stumbled upon this program in University of Amsterdam called Cognitive Musicology. Because I had, yeah, little existential crisis. And I thought, like, Okay, I have to stop this whole music thing, and maybe go into medicine or neuroscience, and like start something totally different. And yeah, and it was like a match made in heaven, cognitive and musicology. And now I'm studying there in pre masters.
And in one of the courses I had to do a digital ethnography because we had to do like a field work research and of course, in these corona times field work. Um…yeah… the term has changed its meaning a little bit in academic sense, because of course, we were not really allowed to go and observe like large groups of people like practicing music, so I thought, Okay, what can I…. What can I find out from I don't know, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, or like the internet itself. And I love YouTube. There's so much [ Everyone laughs ] there's so much interesting stuff, and I'm not even ashamed of it any more.
Um, and I just I was thinking like, okay, music, music, music. Music for people, music for children. Music for unborn babies, music for plants. I have a lot of plants and I was playing music like there's a synthesizer music album for plants and I was practicing it. But my plants still looked a little bit dead…. they're doing fine now, it was water that was missing.
[ Yun] Glad to hear.
[ Lilita ] Yes. And then I thought like, Okay, what about music for animals? And I think the first thing that I googled was music for cows, I don't know, it just came into my mind as a first first animal. And I was like, well, there's no way there's going to be something. And there was, of course, it's YouTube. It’s the internet. And I watched this video where... so it was sunrise. And there's this huge plane field. And there's nobody and and a guy comes in, like with a, with a…. with a trombone.
[ Sounds of video starts ]
And there's a chair in the middle. And he sits on this chair, and he's facing away from the camera. So we're looking at his back, and he starts to play trombone, this song by Lorde Royals.
[ Trombone playing Royals ]
And so this video is going on for like a couple of minutes, and nothing is happening. He's just like, playing the trombone. And suddenly, you can see like, the horizon, like little heads are appearing. And those are the cows. And they're coming closer and closer and closer and closer.
[ Sound of cows ]
And then after a couple of minutes, they're standing like, like in the semi circle.
[ Trombone playing ]
Like very close to him, like literally like an audience and listening to this trombone playing and moo-ing. And like, kind of, well, I don't want to say singing along because I'm not sure if that's the proper term. But they were definitely joining the performance and after that, yeah, I just thought it was very interesting from, from both perspectives, from the perspective of the cows, like what is the reason why the cows were, well, attracted to the sound itself? Was it the music? Was it like the person who they're familiar with? Was it the farmer or…. Like, what, why? Why were they seemingly listening and joining in? And the other thing was that Why? Why did this person decide it was a good idea to play something for animals? Like, what's the reason behind it? And he is, of course, not the only one who is practicing, like music for animals and, but this was like the first….
[ Yun ] The seed...
[ Lilita ] the seed. Yes, that was planted.
[ Yun ] Okay. Did you ever find out more about the story behind that video?
[ Lilita ] No, I did not.
[ Yun ] Not even in the comments.
[ Lilita ] Well, the comments. Well, YouTube comments usually are a place you don't want to spend too much time in because…. well, there was there was nothing that kind of helped me answer the question in this particular video. There are others that I actually read the comments underneath them quite a lot. And it helped me with my research. But um, I was, I was trying to actually connect with some people from other YouTube channels. There is this guy who has a YouTube channel and he is quite popular, and he's playing music for elephants. He is a pianist, you probably have heard of this.
[ Sound of nature and elephants ] [ Piano playing ]
[ Video ] Now that I'm going to play a piece of music called Méditation de Thaïs by the human composer Massenet.
[ Sound of piano ]
[ Lilita ] Yeah, he's playing piano and in the jungle, he … he brought the piano like an upright piano in the jungle and he's playing pieces for elephants.
[ Sound of piano ]
[ Lilita ] And I was trying to reach out to him, and I wrote him an email, but I think he's some sort of YouTube celebrity right now.
[ Yun ] By now definitely.
[ Lilita ] So it was quite quite difficult to get any answers, but I'll keep trying.
[ Yun ] Okay, I wanted to go back a little bit because you mentioned the term digital ethnography.
[ Lilita ] Yes.
[ Yun ] Is that something that already existed before? [ Lilita ] I think so. I mean, since the beginning of internet, digital ethnography basically is looking at how are people acting, interacting and behaving in the digital scene. So ethnography would be, you know, like, looking at people's behavior in the field, let's say, or anywhere really, and digital ethnography just like looks at the digital space instead of the real space.
[ Yun ] And if I understand the lists that you mentioned music for plants, music for cows, that was kind of these are the search terms that you were using, right from the beginning or….
[ Lilita ] Yes,
[ Yun ] okay.
[ Lilita ] Yes. Yes. I was trying to see like, okay, are people also writing music or, or creating music for for animals without ears? And I was I was very curious, you know, is there music for snakes for example? And ...
[ Everyone laughs ]
[ Rae ] and do you have a result ?
[ Lilita ] Unfortunately, not maybe that's that's that's this little scene that I can fill in YouTube. But I was actually looking at, like, hearing ranges...
[ Yun ] But wait, you have snake charmers, no?
[ Rae ] No, snake charmers is more about the movement
[ Yun ] Yeah.
[ Lilita ] I think so. Yeah. But I was I was looking at frequency ranges of different animals and and there was tuna in it. You know, tuna actually has a very shitty hearing. Yeah, that's one of the worst actually from from all the animals. It was like on number like...
[ Yun ] oh, there's a list.
[ Lilita ] Yeah, there's like this huge graph, you know, and, and humans are somewhere in the middle. We're not actually that.... We don't have like that... big of hearing range. Dolphins are the ones who can hear like the highest frequencies, like I think it was more than 300 kilohertz. So it's very, very, very high. And, and tuna. Yeah, tuna is, [ Lilita laughs ] is a couple of 100 hertz frequency range. But that's that's all I know about tuna. So.
[ Everyone laughs ]
[ Rae ] Okay, so it sounds like you've been doing a lot of research around which animals are listening to what or maybe what, which humans are playing to which animals? But we're sort of curious, why are people playing music to animals? Have you sort of uncovered some answers in your research?
[ Lilita ] Well, yes, and no, I mean, it's an ongoing research. Yeah, I would really need to interview and talk to much more people to really get, you know, answers that would that would count. However, I made some my own observations, and I would kind of divide them in three categories.
So first would be yeah, the reason why, let's say there are all these playlists, for example for pets, and that's actually a very, very big thing on YouTube. I probably should mention that the research paper that I actually wrote was specifically about music for cats. Because if I would cover the whole animal kingdom, that would be a book or two. And of course, there was no time for and so I was researching what, what music is there for cats on YouTube. And there are these vast, like playlist hours long, like 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 hours long playlists with very, okay, how to how not to sound snobbish.[ everyone laughs ] So, you know, like this [ Sounds plays in background ] MIDI String Orchestra sound like with some, some eight bit drum sounds from like shitty synthesizers, you know? So, so something like that kind of trying to be like atmospheric, dreamy, calming music, kind of, but like, you could really like make it on a children's synthesizer, you know, like so. So those type of playlist there are like many of them.
[ Sounds continues playing ]
And they have like, millions of views and thousands and thousands of comments, and I was really wondering, okay, like, of course, it's really not about the music itself, because I.... I mean, it's my own subjective opinion, but I don't think that that's the music, why people are going to these playlists, but when you read the comments, you can see that it's, it's, it's almost like a community, you know, people are really interacting with each other. And let's say one person is saying, ‘Oh, you know, actually, my cat really loves this stuff, you know, and we, we, we sleep together and we listen to this music.’ And, and then they're like 100 people replying, like, ‘Oh, yeah, I have the same experience. It's so nice. We, we love our animals. That's so great.’ And people would say to each other, like, ‘Oh, I love you for saying this, you must love your cat so much, you know, we can be friends.’ [ Yun & Rae laughing ]
And they're these conversations starting, you know, because they find like this common ground, which they see as, you know, loving their animal for choosing to play music for them. And and then of course, there are some trolls while maybe not trolls, but they're people who say like, ‘Oh, yeah, you know, my cat was trying to scrape out my eyes, you know, after five minutes.’
[ Lilita laughs ] You know, so there's also humor in these comment sections, and they'll also like, start some conversations, and they're also grieving people who have lost their pets. And they say like, yeah, you know, my dad died yesterday. And I'm listening to these, these playlists, because they remind me of, you know, of my furry friend and, and other people are, you know, like, giving some comfort.
So, like, yeah, that's, that's like, um, it's, it's a community and, and, you know, it just starts with this video. But I think like, this video itself, like, the music itself becomes secondary, like, in a lot of cases.
So that is one aspect. The second one is, yeah, well, actually, it kind of ties to the first one that's its manifestation of love. That's this type of care towards you know, your, your pets towards your, yeah, the animals that you choose to take care of, that, you're trying to find out some ways how to... how to make your pets, let's say feel more comfortable. Because I mean, in recent years, it has been more research that a lot of pets have anxiety issues, you know, like, let's say separation anxiety, especially for, you know, like more nervous cats and dogs who are left, you know, after their owners go to work or school or whatever. And that the idea is that maybe if you play some calming music that would, you know, ease them and, and would make them feel less, less nervous. And of course, also, when you go to a vet, you know, that's also very stressful. So, like the idea behind this, like to help the animals to make them feel more at ease.
And the third one is, of course, pet humanisation. That is a huge topic. But like, in short, it's basically like this new trend that is only growing and growing years by years. And it is this notion that we see our pets more as our family members, and therefore we spend much more time energy and also money, which is one of the most important aspects here, on our pets. And that's, that's like, a new growing industry because of this trend. [ Yun ] Yeah. Wow. This is actually an ever expanding subject the more you talk about it.
[ Lilita ] Yes.
[ Yun ] So yeah, I wanted to ask next. Um, so we're Facebook friends. And I saw on your profile that you were asking people what music you should play to your cat at one point. I was curious, what were some of the answers and why were you asking?
[ Lilita ] Yes. So I asked that because of the research that I was I was doing at my school and I was just very curious if one of my friends are actually practicing this music playing for the animals because I, I talked to some of my friends who own pets and nobody actually said that they ever play instruments or, or play back some music from, let's say, Spotify to their animals. And I was wondering, okay, but where are all these millions of people who are watching it on YouTube? So I thought, okay, I'm just gonna ask Facebook.
But mostly, yeah, I mean, that was my own fault because I didn't really specify why am I asking it, so I think most of the people just took it as a joke because I'm... I can be a little bit of Facebook troll. [ Everyone laughs ] I don't really post serious stuff. My content is usually memes or some, some, some... some jokes and then you know, like this question came. So that's probably why I didn't get any serious answers. But. There was one person who said that, yeah, you know, I have had many cats in my life. And to be honest, I don't think they care about music at all.
[ Everyone laughs ]
And one of the first answers that I read in the beginning of my research, and I was like, Oh my God, okay, you know, this is it. [ Yun ] So along this line, recently, I came across this work by this one artist at Rijks Academy. And his name is Sheng Wen Lo. And he made these extendable ears. It's a device that basically translates frequencies within the cat hearing range to human hearing range, because he was curious about whether human music, or things that sound like music to human ears might be torture for a cat, for example. And so that's why he did it. And he wore this device through headphones for a whole month. Waking up, eating, go into shops sleeping. And, yeah, I'm kind of curious what you think about this idea? Is music for one species possibly torture for another?
[ Lilita ] Very interesting question. I don't know the answer to it. But there's this new term, which was coined by David Teie and he's a cellist and, and a composer. And he created, yeah, this term called species specific music. And he is composing music, specifically for animals. And I think he had similar questions like the one that you just asked me, because there have been some research done on, on how do animals respond to human music?
You know, like, it's, it's actually quite common that, for example, in animal shelters, they play classical music, you know, or in zoos, they sometimes, you know, like, they would play something for monkeys and try to see what their reaction is.
So his research showed that animals don't really respond to human music that well. Either they kind of don't like it, if we can say that way, or they just ignore it totally. And he was thinking like, Okay, what if we're just playing the wrong type of music? You know, because it's another question What, what is music? And why do we perceive something as music and while say, we like something, you know, but we talk about it, like in simpler terms.
Now, there's rhythm, there is frequency range, you know, there's like, some melodic movement, you know. And so, for example, for us humans, rhythm is very important. Because let's say why, why are some slower pieces calming to us, because they are at the base of our heartbeat at rest. And if something is faster than our heartbeat at rest, it is perceived as more energetic, you know, and in some cases, like more, more aggressive music, let's say.
And the same like with the frequency range, I mean, for us humans, a certain frequencies are very comfortable and certain frequencies are absolutely uncomfortable, like very high pitch sounds. You know, when, when sometimes like, your, your device breaks, or you go into some, some room where the speaker like, you can hear like this kind of electric buzz, which is very high, it's really unpleasant.
So, of course, when we're producing music, we will not like use it in our songs, no, in a pop song of Britney Spears, you know, you will not hear like some, I don't know, 18 hertz. [ Yun & Rae laughing ]
And that's because it would be torturous for us humans. And therefore, he was trying to find out like, Okay, if I'm composing specifically for cats, what would be nice for cats. So we know the frequency range hearing frequency range of cats, we know what their heartbeat is. And we know what the vocalization frequency range is. So basically, where is the voice of the cat kind of in? Because also, you know, like, human music is kind of in the range of our
[ Yun ] Okay. [ Lilita ] You know, our voice.
[ Yun ] would never think about it that way.
[ Lilita ] So, he took all these aspects in mind, and he started to create music that was incorporating, let's say, yeah, the heartbeat of the cat as like the rhythmical pattern or the purring sounds, or even the suckling sound to know like when the kittens are suckling the milk from the mother, there's this the certain sound, you know, that, in his opinion might kind of remind cats of I don't know, being, you know, taken care of by their mother and therefore calming them down. So it is being taken into consideration, I think, to make specific music for animals that would not be torturous.
Well, that's kind of a sound engineering remark, I think there it would be quite difficult to to produce like, high frequency sounds from a regular speaker. So if we would create music for animals, you know, that we would also have to play them through devices who are able to, you know, reproduce those very, very, very, super high frequency sounds. It might not be nice for them, but I don't know much more about it.
[ Yun ] Okay. Wow. Yeah. Totally reinvents audio hardware for specific animals.
[ Lilota ] Well, listen, I found out this very horrible thing.
[ Yun ] Oh, no.
[ Everyone laughs ]
[ Lilita ] That I was absolutely shocked by because I umm... I googled headphones for cats.
[ Yun ] What?
[ Yun & Rae laugh ]
[ Lilita ] I googled headphones for cats, because I I stumbled upon this... yeah, an article on pet humanization. And, and then we're talking about headphones for cats, and I was like, what is this? You know, it cannot possibly exist. And it does. Oh, I mean, it did. It was some sort of marketing trick from I don't remember what the company name was anymore. But they, they released like, these little tiny headphones for cats. There were like, 10 headphones in total. And each, like each pair was $1,000. And the idea was, yeah, to donate this money to, I think, animal support or animal, like cruelty free organization, you know? [ Lilita laughs ]
[ Yun ] Okay, I just looked this up. I'm just trying to see if I'm on the right.... I just can't even tell if….
[ Lilita ] Yeah, so that's it.
[ Rae ] That's really it.
[ Yun ] Looks like a fake cat.
[ Lilita ] I mean, well, this one is not a fake cat.
[ Rae ] It looks really cute… it’s terrible, I know, but... [ Yun ] I mean, it looks like human headphones. But they’re around cat's ears.
[ Rae ] Yeah, they’re so little
[ Lilita ] Yeah, but they're also they're not really on cat's ears. They're kind of you know, like, on his head. [ Everyone laughs ] But I mean, the sound is traveling through bones as well. So you know, I mean, you know, there's that. But I mean...
[ Yun ] is it a bone conduction headphone?
[ Lilita ] I don't think so. I don't, I'm not sure. I was a bit late. With, with purchasing it because they were sold out .[ Everyone laughs ] Not like I would spend $1,000 on the cat headphones. But... [ RAe ] Well, speaking of spending $1,000 on cat headphones, one of the questions that we had was sort of the capitalist ties between playing music for animals, or maybe even pet humanisation. You also said earlier that it's very expensive. So we're wondering if you can talk a little bit more about that.
[ Lilita ] Yeah. Well, it's really, it's an industry that is really, really growing and very rapidly so. So I think in 2018, pet business as an in pet product was a $7.2 billion industry. It's huge. Like it's really it's really really huge like also compared to other years like it has been growing you know, exponentially. And you know, like, you have already seen that, there are a lot of products for let's say, dogs that are like, clothing and, and there are companies that make luxury furniture for pets and there's luxury foods and luxury... I don't know like…. even jewelry,
[ Yun ] hotels
[ Rae ] water filters
[ Yun ] jewelry.
[ Lilita ] Yes, there's jewelry I, I stumbled upon one website where they're selling like necklaces, not, not leashes, but necklaces for cats. And like tiaras for cats and for dogs. And of course, like there's this whole thing about Halloween costumes, you know?
[ Rae ] Yeah, my best friend like every year, she would buy her cat, a Halloween costume.
[ Lilita ] I mean, you can go very far with that. You can buy like designer clothes for your pet. And that's expensive stuff, you know? And I was wondering actually, where does it come from? And well, the current explanation is that it has always been the case that people, older people whose children have left their house, so the empty nesters are, you know, like, let's say adopting animals and, and kind of replacing this animal... So it becomes like a new child, you know, somebody to take care of. And I mean, the more products there are that can be sold, the more they're actually are being bought as well. And, and vice versa, of course. And the other thing is that millennials are not having children. But we're having pets.
[ Yun ] Right.
[ Rae ] Yes.
[ Yun ] Very good. points.
[ Lilita ] Yes. Yeah. So the amount of pets is also increasing in the past couple of years. Well, at least according to what I have read, I have not done my own statistics. [ Everyone laughs ] It's also been said that, you know, there's going to be much more reward for veterinarians, you know, because they're much more pets. And, and, and people are willing to spend a lot, a lot of money on pet healthcare. And in some countries, it's already a thing like a pet health insurance.
[ Yun ] Right.
[ Lilita ] Yes.
[ Yun ] I think that exists here too.
[ Lilita ] Could be. I don't know about Holland. But yeah, it's, it's, it's only it's only going up and, and I see, you know, music also, as a product you can sell, of course, you know, so for example, this is David Teie that I already mentioned, that was making species specific music. He also while he, he got this crowdfunding thing going on. And he created two CDs for cats, and now he's selling it commercially, you know, so it's, it has become a commercial project, like a commercial product.
[ Yun ] All right. Yeah. Thanks for that research.
[ Rae ] Yeah,
[ Yun ] Very thorough. So in your bio, you mentioned the terms human, animal and non human animal. Can you tell us why these terms are important to use?
[ Lilita ] It's a little bit difficult for me to answer. Because I don't really know that much about the terminology, and where does it come from, specifically. But these are the terms that are used in and the articles about animal ethics, anthropomorphism, animal and human relationships.
So there is this clear division between human animals and non human animals. And what I know, personally, is that these terms are very much used in animal rights movement, you know, because we kind of have to make this distinction between the humans as species and other animals in terms that a lot of things that we humans experience, animals also experienced, but there is always, you know, like some difference. You know, like, let's say, we still don't know, what is the consciousness level of animals, you know, or how does language work in the animal world. We know that they communicate, but we don't know much about it.
So in a way, we are both sentient beings so we feel things we experience, let's say, pain, suffering. And, you know, these are again, human terms that I'm using. So in a way, we are both animals, but we have to make this clear distinction that they're non human animals, and then they're human animals. So that's how I look at it, but probably there's a better explanation out there. [ Rae ] Yeah, that makes sense. So you were just talking about ethics. And we were wondering if genuine interspecies care is possible, if you feel like it's possible.
[ Lilita ] Well, yes, with a little “but”. You know, I really started my research very naively going to YouTube and watching these cute videos of animals and humans hanging out together playing music, you know, or like dogs singing along somebody who's playing piano. So it started there. And I thought, Oh, this is so great and lovely and all that.
And then I, I went into the zone of human, I mean, pet ethics. And and from there, I went into anthropomorphism and into critical anthropomorphism. And suddenly, like all these terms, you know, like from YouTube cat videos became like, way more serious than I ever anticipated.
Yeah, and I think I have to mention anthropomorphism in our talk because... well, basically what, what, what we as humans are doing, by playing music to animals, we're kind of anthropomorphizing the animals by thinking that because us, we humans are enjoying music that they would too.
On Spotify, there is this option to create a playlist for your pet. It's very interesting. You can, you can just Google it, “pet Spotify playlist”, and then you go to like this page, and you choose your pet, I think you can choose like from cat, dog, lizard, hamster, rabbit, or something like that.
And then you are asked questions, you know, like, what is your pet? Is, Is it shy? Or more curious? Is more energetic or, or the opposite of that? Do they like to sleep a lot? So they kind of ask you these questions where they basically are making you... to describe your pet in kind of human way, you know, like, characterize him and human way. And then they make a playlist. According to that.
I made a playlist for my cat. I don't have my cat here in Holland, but she lives with my mom in Latvia, in Riga. And I asked my mom, can you please play this playlist for my cat and report back? What are, the what are the results, and my mom was sending me these long videos, where my cat is kind of being bored, like staring into the wall. [ Everyone laughs ]
And I made it from my account. So I just noticed that, like, a lot of music was actually from my other playlists, you know, and it was kind of curated in a way that would actually make me like it as well. So it was... I don't know. I mean, it's a very cute idea. But of course, I don't I don't think it really works... it’s for like, maybe like some some cute marketing trick, which is harmless I think.
So yeah. There, there are these like anthropomorphic tendencies that we do, and we cannot kind of avoid them because, I mean, you have to kind of describe pets and some words, right? And there's a slippery slope, in some cases where you can go too far, by thinking like, Okay, this is what the animal feels like, or this is what they must be thinking, or they must be feeling because this is what I would feel or think. And, and that can be dangerous in some cases, you know, because we're really interpreting it wrong, like absolutely wrong.
However, it can also be very helpful, because, I mean, it creates empathy. If we think we understand we, if we think that, you know, if we yell at our cat, and our cat will be upset, we're gonna think before we yell or before, like we kick a dog, you know, we will think about that. I'll probably adjust our behavior according to that, you know? I think to answer your question, I think it is possible, but it has to... So there's this new, like way of anthropomorphizing the animals. And as the term is critical anthropomorphism, which sounds like very fancy and very... [ Lilita laughs ] very complicated, but it basically suggests that we should take into consideration the biological or evolutionary features of the animals that we are interacting with when we anthropomorphize them.
So, for example, there are these geckos that are quite popular pets amongst people. And you know, the like, a lot of people think that they would need like a partner, or they would need to know like another let's say, gecko to to hang out with because we are social beings, you know, humans, we don't really like to be by ourselves constantly. So we think like, Okay, well, probably this lizard will be super lonely, you know, but actually, that's not true. Because if you read about these lizards, you'll find out that they are very solitary animals. And if you put another lizard in the cage, it will be super stressful for them. And you of course, you will not see the lizard sweating or you know, like panting and and telling you like, Oh my god, what does [ Lilita laughs ] this other creature doing here? You know, because they don't express emotions the way, the same way that we do, but like you have to have this knowledge and you have to be willing to find out, before you do something that might potentially be harmful or not.
[ music plays in the background ]
[ Yun ] So we have some audience questions now. From the Hague: do you think that even if music is something that specifically humans make, it can be received by other forms of life too thanks to sharing the capacity to feel pleasure, for example?
[ Lilita ] Hmm. Well, we're not talking about animals anymore, right? But other species? [ Yun ] Yeah, this is very broad, actually. [ Laughing ] So I can’t assume anything for the person who asked this- but other life forms.
[ Lilita ] Other life forms? Okay, well, let's say that I already answered about the animals. I'm gonna look at this question from another perspective. There is already music that is made for, like plants, as I already mentioned before. If we assume that we perceive music through our ears, you know, through our auditory cortex, and then we do all the calculation things in our brains, and therefore we like experience, whatever we experience, be it emotional, physical like that we want to move or that I don't know, we feel sad or happy. Of course, with other species that don't have the capacity to feel emotions, that would be, I think, difficult [ Lilita laughs ] to, to enjoy it the same way we do the sentient beings.
However, music is also vibrations, right? And I don't know much about that, per se, but it has been, like music has been used, let's say in and in greenhouses, you know, to, to make tomatoes grow better.
[ Yun ] Okay, I did not know that.
[ Lilita ] Yes. I mean, it's, it's not like a widely used practice, of course. But there have been experiments where, you know, people are trying to grow grass under influence of different kinds of music or grow like some salt crystals and see, you know, like, what is the difference when one music is introduced, and another type of music is introduced.
So I don't really know what is the reason one is growing better than the other. But my take on it is that it has to do with the fact that different music has different vibrations, as the same as you know, like different frequency ranges have different vibrations, you know? And it could be that, and certain plants grow better when certain frequency vibration is introduced, and let's say feel extremely uncomfortable, where, when very low frequencies are, are introduced, and I don't know, maybe it's a, like, some genetic memory is saying, like, “Oh, this is a earthquake, you know, like, we have to stop growing or grow faster.” But it's a very, very interesting question. It's kind of beyond my own research, but it's nice to think about it.
[ Yun ] Cool.
[ Rae ] Yeah. Perfect. Thank you. We have another question. So how do you look at humans producing noise pollution in natural parks or areas? Should music and other noises be forbidden and natural parks, forests, etc, so that animals can communicate and make animal noises and sounds without humans?
[ Lilita ] Yeah, well, that's, that's the question is very relevant not only to places which are very important for animals, but also like, noise pollution is very dangerous to humans as well. So the answer is yes, of course, we should. I think we really should take care that, like, in general noise pollution goes down. And, and maybe we should start with, let's say, the places which, you know, are protected and where animals have absolutely no control on reducing their own noise level, you know, so we should reduce like the human impact on them.
But uh, I just wanted to talk about the noise pollution itself because I recently read an article about how dangerous noise pollution is in yeah.... for people who are living in the cities. And of course, we know that like, if you're constantly listening to drilling sounds from your neighbors, you know, like, it will make you grumpy. And if you're grumpy, you’re stressed and stress is not good for you, you know?
But, but in general noise, it's a stressor, you know, and you don't necessarily have to experience it on a conscious level. And whatever, is a stressor has a potential to, let's say, raise your blood pressure. And the blood pressure is a very, you know, sensitive subject that can introduce like a lot of problems, let's say like some heart diseases and stuff like that.
So this research that I read said that we unknowingly are shortening our lives by a couple of years just because of the noise pollution. And that's a very scary thing, you know, as in, it's nice to be aware of it. But it's also kind of difficult to yeah, to eliminate if you choose to live in the city, for example.
And, and when it comes to the animals. Yeah, I mean, a lot of species communicate in between each other with certain sounds, and it's very, very important for their own survival. Because, you know, you might think, like, oh, the birds are singing nice songs because they have nothing better to do. But I mean, it's, it's always has some sort of function, you know be it like to survive or to attract another mate, you know, so if we intervened in these processes, and now we're really intervening in their lives into their well being... So we should not do that, if possible.
[ Yun ] All these points, if we can make a public service announcement to everyone in The Hague in December, and try to reduce the number of fireworks, I would be personally very grateful.
[ Lilita ] Yes, I totally agree with you. Yeah, me too. I mean, I'm, I'm scared of the fireworks and I can rationalize, like, what it is. You know, I know what a firework is, I know why it's why it's done. But let's say, you know, your dog and your cat that have no idea. They have absolutely no clue. And it's so stressful. And I mean, it's like, it's not something new that I'm telling you, of course, know that. But, um, yeah, like this whole Christmas season for, for animals, it can be extremely traumatic.
[ Yun & Rae ] for humans and non humans, alike.
[ Lilita laughs ]
[ Rae ] Okay, we have one final question.
[ Yun ] So musically, how would you categorize the sounds which animals produce? Could they be considered music? I don't know if this is for you. But... [ Yun laughs ]
[ Lilita ] Well, there's this field of study, which is called zoomusicology, which is specifically trying to answer this question, to look at the sounds that are produced by animals or are being received by animals, like, were like, where's this categorized? You know, like, is this music? Or this? Is this not music? It's hard for me to answer it from an animal perspective of course. One, because I haven't talked to them. The other reason is because, of course, I haven't researched it deeply enough.
But, I mean, it's, it's a well known fact that us humans are quite much inspired by sounds that are made by animals, you know, there are so many pieces that are inspired by it -- on bird songs, you know, and not only like in the romantic, like, 19th century time, but also, you know, like nowadays, you know, we record, I don't know, some, some vocalizations of animals, and you do use it as a musical motive. [ music starts fading in in the background ] So, I mean, for us humans, I think we can say that, what we hear is, it can be considered as music.
[ Yun ] So it's a matter of perspective, then...
[ Lilita ] I think so. I mean, everything is a matter of perspective.
[ Everyone laughs ] [ Yun ] Cool. Well, thank you for being honest, honestly. And thank you so much for your... Yeah, for sharing your thoughts and your research. It seems really thorough, but also, like there's a lot of room to go further... almost endless.
[ Rae ] Yeah.
[ Yun ] Yeah. Thanks for taking us on your journey.
[ Lilita ] Thank you for having me.
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[ Yun ] So that was Lilita Dunska on this episode of BARTALK. My name is Yun Lee.
[ Rae ] And I'm Rae Parnell. If you like what you heard, you can follow us on Instagram and Facebook. And be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts. We also made a transcription of this episode, which you can find on our website. You can find all the links in the show notes of this episode.
[ Yun ] We wanna thank Hans Poel for recording and editing these podcasts. Nia Konstantinova for doing our PR. Denise Lee for designing the banner and Sarafina van Ast for transcribing our podcasts
[ Rae ] And we wanna thank iii for letting us record in their studio, Stroom Den Haag for supporting our program and last but not least we wanna thank all of you listeners out there tuning in.
[ Yun ] Join us next week when we talk to Black Trans Art & Joy Fund about mutual aid, solidarity and allyship.
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