Some Schoenberg starts up on the radio. Not my cup of tea. I'm just about to turn it off, when I notice that the dog is listening to it intently. She seems entranced by the violin part, tipping her head sideways and pricking up her ears. I always suspected Violet was musical. She used to find my cello playing unbearable and would leave the room when I started, but now she sticks it out. A sign, I think, that my playing has improved.

She isn't the only musical animal. There's an elephant orchestra in Lampang, northern Thailand, playing percussion and harmonicas, cows who are keen on Mozart – it soothes them during milking, Tamarind monkeys soothed by Metallica, two labradors who play piano duet, accompanied by an ocarina, singing whales and the particularly talented Lyre bird.

Perhaps I ought tell Chris Packham, who has been investigating Inside the Animal Mind on telly, about Violet's sensitivities. Full marks to him for demonstrating that there is something in those minds and they're not just a total blank, but why is anyone surprised that animals think sequentially, fib, crack jokes and communicate? How else could they manage their herds, packs and flocks, or plan their next dinner?

I am browned off with people arguing four legs off a donkey to prove that animals' brains can do diddlysquit, but they're going to go on doing it, otherwise it might be more difficult for them to hack animals to pieces or shoot them dead with impunity. I searched the internet in vain for creatures with small brains that cannot think at all, and then at last I came across two: Olivia Opre and Mindy Arthurs, American "big-game huntresses", who love to take selfies cuddling up to huge, possibly still warm and bleeding animal stiffs, and whose homes are bedecked with the stuffed heads of corpses. I bet they don't play percussion, recognise Schoenberg or even know that there's something called an ecosystem.

Lets hope the next inbred giraffe is musical, to make sure no one chops up another Marius.