The Noise Is Not Just Loud, It Is the Wrong Kind of Loud
Dogs hear frequencies between 40 Hz and 65,000 Hz, roughly twice the upper range of human hearing. Dhak drums produce deep, resonant beats that carry far below the threshold of human discomfort but sit squarely in the range that triggers a dog's threat-detection response. The problem is not volume alone, it is unpredictability. A single sustained loud sound is stressful. A sound that stops, restarts, accelerates during aarti, and then cuts out entirely at 2 a.m. keeps the nervous system in a state of unresolved alertness. Cortisol, the primary stress hormone in mammals, does not spike once and return to baseline; repeated unpredictable stimuli keep it elevated across hours. In street dogs already living with baseline anxiety from territory competition and food insecurity, four days of this can suppress appetite, trigger diarrhoea, and cause stereotypic pacing that persists after the pandal comes down.
