However, to our knowledge, there are no studies on non-human animals focusing on evaluation of emotional responses to music. Furthermore, depending on the music presented, changes in activity have been reported in pigs 19 and tamarins 20. Other studies focusing on behavioural responses have reported various effects, including decreased abnormal behaviors including fewer stereotypies in elephants 15 and reduction of aggression and agitation in chimpanzees 16 decreased anxious behavior in gorillas 17 and reduction of barking and increased periods of resting in dogs 18. Studies on the effect of music on biological responses have been performed, reporting increased milk production in cows 13 and growth rates in carp 14. However, with scientific recognition of sentience in animals 7 the need for research in non-human models has emerged, to understand emotions from biological and evolutionary perspectives 8, 9.Īuditory signals in animals are useful to communicate with recipients 10, 11 or to manipulate their behavior 11, 12. Thus, music has been recognized as a powerful emotional communication tool 6. The use of music and its effects on emotions has been broadly studied in humans, with indications that the type of acoustic stimulation influences both mood 1, 2 and behavior 3, 4, inducing a wide variety of affective experiences in humans 5. We concluded that pigs have a wide variety of emotional responses, with different affective states related to the music structure used, providing evidence of its potential use as environmental enrichment for this species. Musical stimulation (treatment) increased ( P < 0.01) both emotional indices, compared to other periods and this response was influenced by harmonic characteristics of the music. Two principal components (PC) were considered in the analysis: PC1, characterized as a positive emotions index, included the emotional responses content, playful, sociable, and happy, whereas PC2, characterized as a negative emotions index, included fearful, inquisitive, and uneasy with positive loadings, and relaxed and calm with negative loadings. Data were evaluated using Principal component analysis (PCA). Qualitative Behavioral Assessment (QBA) was used to evaluate effects of 16 distinct musical pieces (in terms of harmonic structure) on emotional responses in nursery pigs (n = 30) during four periods: “habituation”, “treatments”, “breaks” and “final”. There is a lack of clarity on whether pigs can emotionally respond to musical stimulation and whether that response is related to music structure.
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