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Teie contacted Snowdon to access a library of monkey recordings, and he quickly realized that some components of monkey communication are similar to the musical features found in human voice patterns. But our work suggests that they aren’t that interested in human music or prefer not to listen to it at all.” However, if music was tailored specifically to the kinds of sounds that animals are used to hearing, McDermott thinks it might have a more positive effect.
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“It’s very common for people to play music for animals that are in captivity, because they figure that they’ll be interested in it or enjoy it. “I think that the most interesting thing that has come out of this study is some suggestions for animal care,” he said. Because the researchers designed the sounds to share acoustical properties with the noises monkeys make to express emotions, McDermott said it’s natural the animals would respond emotionally. “It’s not obvious that this would happen, but I don’t think it’s terribly surprising,” said neuroscientist Josh McDermott of New York University, who studies primates and music but was not involved in this study. After hearing the calm music, the monkeys became more relaxed and social. After listening to the fear-based track, the animals became anxious and upset, as indicated by increased activity and nervous behaviors like urination and scent marking. Monkey music, on the other hand, had a significant and predictable effect on behavior. The monkeys didn’t respond at all to Nine-Inch Nails, Tool or Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings,” but oddly enough, they did become slightly calmer after listening to “Of Wolf and Man” by Metallica. An independent observer recorded monkey behavior for five minutes before and after playing each selection. The researchers played each piece, as well as several samples of human music, for 14 tamarin monkeys that hadn’t heard music before. “These are compositions that are intended to test whether we can convey emotional meaning and induce emotional states in other species.” “What David has done is to create compositions that are based on structural aspects of the calls but aren’t directly mimicking the calls,” Snowdon said.