I recently received a copy of the new book by musician/researcher Daniel Levitan, author of "This Is Your Brain On Music." His new one, "The World In Six Songs", posits that humans have a hard-wired need for music which has in many ways driven the evolution of our species and its societies.

I was thinking about this recently when I dog-sat my greyhound friends Roscoe and Moose.  While they possess many fine qualities - attractive looks, impressive landspeed, the good taste to be completely devoted to me - an appreciation for music doesn't appear to be among them. I've used them as subjects in a benign sort of animal experimentation, in which I exposed them to different musical stimulae.  And each time the result is the same: complete indifference.  I'd love to say that Mozart appears to soothe them, or that Beethoven so inspires them that they've taken up oil painting, but they never respond with so much as a quizzical look.  Whether I play Satie, or gospel choirs, 1920s dance bands or vintage disco, all I got from them is an expression that seems to say "Might you stop fiddling around with the CDs and dole out the Snausages anytime soon?"   I'm inclined to feel sorry for any creature who'll never know the soaring feeling one gets from listening to great music, but it's actually hard to summon up much pity for them when they're snoozing contentedly among a pile of stuffed animal and chewtoys, wholly unaware of any of the world's injustices and sorrows.

I acknowledge that my experiment isn't very scientific.  So I open up the laboratory to you. Do your pets - dogs, cats, birds - respond to music? How? Do they show a preference for particular composers or styles of music?