It's often said music is the universal language of humanity. Now, a 12-year-old Houston boy is putting that to the test for an unlikely audience—man's best friend. Yuvi Agarwal started playing keyboard when he was 4 and several years ago noticed his playing soothed his family's restless goldendoodle, Bozo. He grew curious if it also could help stressed homeless animals. With help from his parents, who both have backgrounds in marketing, he founded the nonprofit Wild Tunes in 2023 to recruit musicians to play in animal shelters. So far, he has enlisted about 100 volunteer musicians and singers of all ages and abilities to perform at nine shelters in Houston, New Jersey, and Denver.
"You don't have to understand the lyrics to enjoy the music," Yuvi said recently after playing hits like the Beatles' "Hey Jude" and Ed Sheeran's "Perfect" on his portable keyboard at the Denver Animal Shelter. "Just enjoy the melody, the harmony, and the rhythms. So it transcends linguistic barriers, and ... it can [even] just transcend species." Yuvi noted that many of his four-legged listeners, which usually include dogs and cats, become excited when he enters their kennel. But after a few minutes of playing, they calm down; some even go to sleep.
He remembers a rescue dog named Penelope that refused to come out of her enclosure in Houston to be fed. "Within a short period of me playing, she went from not even coming out of her kennel to licking me all over my face and nibbling my ears," Yuvi said. While the effect of music on humans has been studied extensively, its role in animal behavior remains murky. Several studies suggest that classical music generally has a calming influence on dogs in stressful environments like kennels, shelters, and veterinary clinics. But some researchers warn there isn't enough data to support the claim.
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"We always want these really simplistic answers. ... I think that it's much more nuanced than that," said Lori Kogan, who chairs the Human-Animal Interaction Section of the American Psychological Association. "There's a lot more research that needs to happen before ... we can unequivocally say that music is a great thing for animals." For Yuvi, however, his firsthand experience at shelters is undeniable evidence that music helps comfort stressed animals, and he plans to grow Wild Tunes into a nationwide program. More here.
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