Here’s one for TBG -Monkeys Appreciate Monkey Music and Metallica
Posted by dorian on October 27, 2009
Cotton-Top Tamarin Monkey | Discovery News Video
Monkeys Appreciate Monkey Music and Metallica
Sept. 1, 2009 — Non-human animals usually prefer silence to our music. However, when cotton-top tamarins heard songs based on their own calls, the diminutive, fluffy primates listened with interest to the monkey music, which even altered their moods, according to a new study.
Music therefore appears to be most effective when it is species specific, suggests the study, published in the latest Royal Society Biology Letters.
Co-author David Teie told Discovery News that “all of the previous studies on the effect of human music on animals has shown that they don’t give a hoot about our music.”
“Did we really think that bats would get little tears flowing up their little faces when listening to the ‘Ave Maria‘?” questioned Teie, a lecturer in the School of Music at the University of Maryland who is also a cellist in the National Symphony Orchestra.
He added, “Music is a human construct designed for humans. Absolutely everything about human music is based on human development and perception, from the speeds of the pulses to how high the melodies are. Every part of human music is based on human appeal.”
To create music with more monkey appeal, Teie composed pieces using specific features in the tamarin calls, manipulating rising or falling pitches and the duration of various sounds. The music was inspired by sounds the tamarins make to convey one of two messages: fear and friendly affiliation.
When the music was played to seven pairs of adult cotton-top tamarins housed at the University of Wisconsin, the monkeys became more anxious and jittery when they heard the fearful monkey music. They then calmed down, and sometimes even foraged, upon hearing the affiliation-based music.
Regular human music was also played to the monkeys, which predictably showed little response, except for a very surprising, calming response to the heavy metal band Metallica.
Although birds, dolphins, whales and other animals produce what we call “songs,” this study is among the first to show that a non-human animal can truly appreciate music.
“We think that the emotional communication part of music has an early history that predates humans,” co-author Charles Snowdon, a University of Wisconsin professor of psychology and zoology, told Discovery News. “If music based on tamarin calls can alter their behavior, then our ancestors would have been able to use similar components of music to influence one another, and perhaps simple words to name things or to express actions.”
Prior research has indicated that Neanderthals made bone flutes and could speak and sing.
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The Bicycling Guitarist said
Thanks Dorian.
I recently saw an article about Music for cats that also is species-specific music. From the web site: “A hundred years from now people will have to be taught that music was once available only to humans.”
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