Animal sounds send us off on flights of fancy. Legend has it that a 15th-century king of France commissioned a “piganino” or pig organ, and there are scholarly reports of a “cat piano”. Instead of sweet music, the “donkey organ” produced only coarse braying noises and hence was a byword for the failed artist. All these “living instruments” work in the same way: when the keys were pressed, the captive animals were pricked or hurt to make them meow, hee-haw, or grunt.