This story is adapted from Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolution's Creativity, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction, by David George Haskell. I first held a violin in my late forties.

At Denver's main animal shelter, roughly 300 animals hang out, hoping to get adopted. Entering one room, you’ll find Leilani, a boxer, Milk Dud, a pit bull and at the end of a row of enclosures, a ...

To experiment with “playing” the strands of a web like the vibrating strings of a musical instrument, scientists at MIT used the web of a tropical tent-web spider (Cyrtophora citricola). A rattlesnake ...

People use music to set moods, create a desired atmosphere and evoke memories of family and friends. The right song at the right time can have similar effects for some dogs. Pet owners, trainers and ...

We don’t know for certain what causes these responses. Many experiments have been done to investigate the mechanisms of the calming effect of music in animals, but conclusions have been difficult to ...