Even animals ejoy music

From a distance, one would be forgiven for thinking that it is an entertainment nook owing to the music that blares from this place. You will hear sounds of top international artistes like Celine Dion, Bob Marley and Jay-Z; and you will also hear some of the most popular tunes on the local music scene. Just to avoid living in suspiciousness, I decided to head to Sina Gerard’s farm, located in Nyirangarama, Musanze District, Northern Province, to find out what exactly was going on. If you thought that music makes only human beings relax and feel good, think again. At Sina Gerard’s farm, these animals (pigs and cows) pay undivided attention to the sounds of music, even though they cannot interpret it. Sina Gerard is a local farmer and agricultural produce processor based in Musanze. “It is not that these animals listen to the music and dance to the tunes like human beings do, but we realised that when the music is playing, they look relaxed, which, we believe, has a positive impact on their health,” says Claver Hakizimana, the man who is in charge of playing music for these animals. Hakizimana says he usually plays music for these animals after they have eaten because “it aids digestion”. According to Hakizimana, high-tempo music like techno is good for the pigs when they are about to conceive because it excites them. Also, Hakizimana says, the pigs don’t consume a lot of food because most of the time they are asleep.Facts about pigsPigs snuggle close to one another and prefer to sleep nose to nose. They dream, much as humans do. In their natural surroundings, pigs spend hours playing, sunbathing, and exploring. People who run animal sanctuaries for farmed animals often report that pigs, like humans, enjoy listening to music, playing with soccer balls, and getting massages.Pigs communicate constantly with one another; more than 20 vocalizations have been identified that pigs use in different situations, from wooing mates to saying, “I’m hungry!”Newborn piglets learn to run to their mothers’ voices and to recognize their own names. Mother pigs sing to their young while nursing.According to Professor Donald Broom of the Cambridge University Veterinary School, “[Pigs] have the cognitive ability to be quite sophisticated. Even more so than dogs and certainly [more so than human] 3-year-olds. “Pigs appear to have a good sense of direction and have found their way home over great distances. Adult pigs can run at speeds of up to 11 miles an hour.Professor Stanley Curtis of Penn State University has found that pigs can play joystick-controlled video games and are “capable of abstract representation. “ Dr. Curtis believes that “there is much more going on in terms of thinking and observing by these pigs than we would ever have guessed.”Pigs do not “eat like pigs” or “pig out.” They prefer to eat slowly and savor their food.Suzanne Held, who studies the cognitive abilities of farmed animals at the University of Bristol’s Centre of Behavioural Biology, says that pigs are “really good at remembering where food is located, because in their natural environment food is patchily distributed and it pays to revisit profitable food patches.”Pigs are clean animals. If given sufficient space, they will be careful not to soil the area where they sleep or eat. Pigs don’t “sweat like pigs”; they are actually unable to sweat. They like to bathe in water or mud to keep cool, and they actually prefer water to mud. One woman developed a shower for her pigs, and they learned to turn it on and off by themselves.In his book The Whole Hog, biologist and Johannesburg Zoo director Lyall Watson writes, “I know of no other animals [that] are more consistently curious, more willing to explore new experiences, more ready to meet the world with open mouthed enthusiasm. Pigs, I have discovered, are incurable optimists and get a big kick out of just being.”

Lifestyle

Even animals ejoy music