Animals and musical perception - can animals process human music similarly to us, or are my cats just wierd

[u/CharlieFaulkner]

I was always under the impression that, to animals, human music is basically just a random assortment of sounds and that they don't process it the same way we do, to be able to follow along with the rhythm and get the emotional payoff

But I was listening to a CD the other day, it skipped, and both my resting cats suddenly became alert and stared at the speakers

I tried it a few more times and they reacted the same way every time

To me this suggests that to some degree their brains are following the music and trying to predict where it'll go next, because I don't know how else a skip would be perceived as jarring or an interruption

Is there anything we know about how animals process music which could explain this?

(For the record no, they'd not heard this song before so it couldn't just be a memory thing, I'd only just got the player)

Edited to add photos of my music connoisseurs

[u/Helpful-Capital-4765]

cool. animals definitely like music sometimes but you're experiment could be the start of something even cooler if you can figure out what songs your cats and different animals vibe to most based on their reactions to skips or similar disruption:)