Relax with Animal ASMR

Crunch, crunch, crunch go the little mouths of two adorable rabbits on my laptop screen. The woman’s voice in the video explains how she listens to the munching of her furry roommates to relax. Hearing them munch away, I can’t help but agree. The sound is soothing and sends tingles up and down my spine. “I just kind of get down on their level and listen to the bunny ASMR,” the human voice continues as the bunnies chomp away. Once again, I’m amazed at the new interspecies practices my animal chaplaincy students introduce me to. Bunny ASMR? Brilliant!

If you’ve never heard of ASMR, here’s a quick overview. The autonomous sensory meridian response is a usually pleasant tingling sensation that typically starts at your scalp and moves down your spine, sometimes referred to colloquially as an “orgasm for the brain.” ASMR is triggered by specific visuals or sounds—think whispers, gentle tapping, crinkling, and soft brushing.

A growing community of people swear by the deeply relaxing experience, using it to relieve stress, anxiety, or insomnia. (And, admittedly, a sub-trend of erotic ASMR can be found as well.) While ASMR is commonly associated with human-made actions and sounds, animal-sound ASMR has gained popularity—it features purring cats, crunching rabbits, chirping birds, and the rhythmic breathing of dogs.

Animal ASMR vs. Naturescape Soundtracks: What’s the Difference?

It’s important to note this isn’t your run-of-the-mill naturescape soundtrack, though. While both animal ASMR and naturescape soundtracks offer relaxing auditory experiences, they differ in focus, purpose, and how they affect listeners.

Animal ASMR features individual animal sounds that are repetitive and feel deeply textured. These sounds can feel intimate and up close, mimicking the effects of physical closeness to an animal.

Naturescape soundtracks, on the other hand, focus on broader environmental sounds, like rustling leaves, ocean waves, or distant bird calls. They create an immersive, expansive atmosphere and, in some ways, replicate the experience of being in nature. There’s a sense of tranquility and vastness in naturescape tracks that make them great for meditation or background ambience during a soothing massage. But the close-up, sensory-rich details that define ASMR’s tingle factor are lacking.

Are ASMR’s Effects Real?

Scientists are still studying ASMR to understand why certain sounds produce the anecdotally reported effects, with a growing body of evidence supporting their findings. For example, one study involving 30 ASMR enthusiasts suggests personal preference is a factor in effectiveness. In the study, participants were asked to self-report the auditory triggers and video styles they found most effective in eliciting an ASMR response. They also identified non-preferred ASMR triggers—sounds or visuals that they did not enjoy or that did not elicit ASMR sensations. Based on the participant’s responses, researchers curated three sets of ASMR videos for each person: preferred, non-preferred, and control. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the researchers then observed each participant’s brain activity while watching each video. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the results suggest that only preferred videos significantly activated the parts of their brains linked to relaxation, emotional processing, and reward.

Frustratingly for me, the study did not detail the specific content of these videos, such as whether they included animal sounds or visuals. Indeed, animals are often minor referents in research studies regarding the impact of ASMR. For example, Lochte et al. (2018) suggest that the human behavioral responses of ASMR are similar to those observed in animals when grooming themselves. Bogueva and Marinova (2020) wondered if ASMR might encourage younger generations to respond to climate change and influence pro-environmental behaviors that would help animals and habitats. Findings were mixed. Numerous dissertations by aspiring academics explore animals in ASMR directly but sadly have yet to be published.

Experiencing Animal ASMR

Despite the lack of research solely based on the use of animal sounds in ASMR, videos abound—just head over to YouTube and search “Rabbit ASMR” or “Animal ASMR.” But animal advocates beware; doing so may prompt many ethical questions for you, including: Are the animals being treated fairly? Are they chomping on something healthy or something unhealthy that a human finds pleasant sounding? Do animals have a right to privacy?

Here are my tips for animal-friendly, animal ethics-informed practices:

• Listen to your animal companions: See what happens if you lower your head down near their food dish while they are eating. If they give you the “Hey, back off, human” look (and many, I suspect, will), then try Plan B: Place a snack on a plate in a room, lie down near it, and see if they will come close to munch down. If that’s a no-go as well, activate a video or audio recording app on your phone and place it near the snack. While this doesn’t necessarily get around the consent issue, it’s one possible way to proceed with more consideration.
• Listen to friends’ animals: If you have a friend with an animal companion who doesn’t seem to mind you listening in as they eat, head to their place instead. Repeat the above experiments.
• Refine your search to animal-helping organizations: Expand your YouTube search to include “animal sanctuary ASMR” for videos of animals who have been rescued from hoarding or animal agriculture. If you enjoy the videos, consider supporting the eating habits of the animals. Animal sanctuaries are incredibly expensive to maintain, so put your money where your ears are.
• The internet has a cat: If you love the sound of cats purring, just pop on some headphones and check out Purrli. This is my go-to cat replacement for when I’m traveling away from home. You can adjust the digital cat’s purr from sleepy to happy, relaxed to overjoyed, and so on.
• Listen to vegan ASMR cooking: The folks at Peaceful Cuisine are redefining what it’s like to listen to cooking videos, scratching your itch for ASMR in a way that promotes animal-friendly eating.

Not all people experience ASMR responses. But that doesn’t mean listening to animals doesn’t have an impact. Dominic Pettman’s Sonic Intimacy: Voice, Species, Technics (Or, How to Listen to the World) from Stanford Press offers valuable insights about the benefits of listening to animals in general. Pettman suggests that we need to better attune our ears to the myriad sounds that constitute our world, including “creaturely” and “ecological” voices. Perhaps then we will be able to listen to animals far and wide and better understand how tuning into these voices can inspire us to help all creatures thrive.

Explore more on watching animals: Read “Can Watching Bear Cams Improve Well-being?”