Why Do Dogs Howl to Music—And Can They Really Match Pitch?

You may have seen all the singing dogs on your TikTok feed (maybe you’re a fangirl of Indi, a particularly popular canine vocalist), or maybe you’ve experienced the phenomenon firsthand: You’re playing or singing a song at home, and suddenly your dog starts howling along, surprisingly in tune. Before you assign them the role of backup singer in the family band, you might be wondering what’s going on from their perspective. 

Are our dogs really musical ingenues or just trying to be included? Are they tapping into their wolf ancestry or actually suggesting we pipe down? We spoke with canine cognition experts about what might be driving the instinct to howl to music, whether dogs can match pitch, and if the behavior is more common in certain breeds than others.

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Why do dogs howl, and do they match pitch when they do?

Dogs howl for many reasons. Some howl to get attention, a behavior which then may be reinforced by the attention they inevitably receive. Others howl to express irritation at a particular stimulus, like a loud siren; or as a sign of emotional distress, if they’ve been left alone for too long and are experiencing separation anxiety. 

Dogs use their ability to vocalize, whether via barking, whining, or howling, to communicate thoughts and ideas to humans, and this strengthens their social bond with us, says to Dr. Zachary Silver, professor of psychology and director of the Canine Intelligence Lab at Occidental College. 

When dogs howl in response to music, “they’re telling the human, ‘I’m aware of what’s going on, and either, I want to be involved, or I want this noise to stop,’” Dr. Silver says. The short answer to the pitch question is yes, he adds: “[That] suggests a level of engagement beyond, ‘I hear a noise, and I’m responding.’”

Pitch-matching is a modern day application of a very ancient behavior.

Howling is a crucial communication tool for wolves. They howl to establish long-distance contact, create social cohesion among the pack, or mount a territorial defense against rival packs. And they’ve shown the ability to match pitch, too. 

“Sometimes, wolves match pitch to try to seem like a larger group, or modulate pitch to single themselves out as individuals,” explains Sophie Barton, a researcher at the Canine Brains Project at Harvard Hecht Lab, and PhD candidate in human evolutionary biology.

But wolves are not typically exposed to music in the wild, unlike domesticated dogs today. Among today’s dogs, howling is more common in ancestral or ancient breeds, including Hounds and Huskies, which are more genetically similar to wolves than modern or Victorian breeds, like Terriers or Retrievers, Dr. Silver explains.

Therefore, the proclivity among these breeds to howl to music suggests an evolutionary disposition to howling, applied within a modern-day context, Dr. Silver says.   

Dogs’ pitch is still being studied.

Since 2020, researchers at Harvard Hecht Lab’s Canine Brains Project have been collecting data for their Howling Study, which looks at whether dogs are able to change the pitch of their howls based on stimuli that they howl to already. 

Researchers asked participants whose dogs already howl to complete surveys about their dog’s breed, the context in which they howl, and the stimulus that triggers them to howl, like a siren or a song. Then, they sent upshifted or downshifted versions of the howl trigger and asked pup parents to record their dog to see if it could adjust their howling pitch to the higher or lower version. 

Results from 700 surveys have informed researchers about the types of dogs most likely to howl and match pitch, the most common contexts that trigger howling, and how domestication has affected the behavior.  

Not all dogs match pitch — but if they do, let them sing.

“We did find evidence of pitch matching in dogs, but not all dogs do it,” Barton explains. Based on the surveys, “we noticed that ancient breeds tend to howl more: Hounds, Huskies, Shiba Inu, Saluki, while dogs more distant than wolves are engaging less in it.” According to Barton, these findings suggest that howling has been shaped by dog domestication and artificial selection “quite intensely.” 

Instead, modern breeds howl less and bark more. “They invest more in short distance communication than close distance,” Barton says. The survey results also showed that more dogs howled in response to being separated from their human than they did in response to an auditory stimulus.  

The dogs that did howl to auditory stimulus were particular about what it was. Some only howled to live music and not recorded music. “One dog with a piano would only howl along if their human was playing it,” says Barton, positing that this would suggest there’s a social motivation behind it. 

So, the next time your pup starts crooning when you hit that special note on the piano, let them in on the jam session. Whether they’re guided by an inherited instinct, or just want to hang out — or both — they’re telling you they want to participate. Enjoy the bonding experience with your little domesticated wolf descendent.