![]() ![]() "That would be valuable if a group was threatened in that situation, you don't want everybody being calm, you want them alert. "I am not calling just to let you know how I am feeling, but my call can also stimulate a similar state in you," Snowdon says. This change in behavior suggests that for cotton-top tamarins, communication is about much more than just information. The affiliative music is making them calmer they move less, eat and drink at a higher rate, and show less anxiety behavior." These musical elements are inducing a relatively long-term change in behavior of listeners. "People have looked at animal communication in terms of conveying information - 'I am hungry,' or 'I am afraid.' But it's much more than that. The study opens a new window into animal communication, Snowdon says. Oddly, their only response to several samples of human music was a calming response to the heavy-metal band Metallica. Monkeys interpret rising and falling tones differently than humans. When I add extra elements, change the tone of voice, the rhythm, pitch or speed, that is where the emotional content is contained." Snowdon, who has sung in choirs for most of his life, adds, "My talking does not necessarily tell you about my emotional state. Copyright David Teie, University of Maryland Copyright David Teie, University of Maryland A musical track that calms and soothes the tamarins contains long, pure notes that use familiar musical scales. Both the staccato beats and noise arouse anxious behavior in the animals. Music based on fear and threat calls of the tamarin. The voice, the intonation pattern, the musicality can matter more than the words." If you bark out, 'PLAY WITH IT,' a baby will freeze. We add musical features to speech so it will influence the affective state of a baby. Approval has a rising tone, and soothing has a decreasing tone. "We use legato (long tones) with babies to calm them," Snowdon says. ![]() Studies show that babies that are too young to understand words can still interpret a long tone and a descending pitch as soothing, and a short tone as inhibiting. Teie composed the music using specific features he noticed in the monkeys' calls, such as rising or falling pitches, and the duration of various sounds, says Snowdon, who notes that monkeys are not the only ones who use musical elements to convey emotional content in speech. "He said, 'This is a call from an animal that is very upset this is from an animal that is more relaxed.' He was able to read the emotional state just by the musical analysis." Snowdon, a longtime researcher into primate behavior, says the project began with an inquiry from Teie, who plays cello in the National Symphony Orchestra: Had Snowdon ever tested the effects of music on monkeys? When Teie listened to recordings made in Snowdon's monkey colony at the psychology department at UW-Madison, he readily discerned the animal's affective state, Snowdon says. Courtesy Charles Snowdon, University of Wisconsin-Madison Courtesy Charles Snowdon, University of Wisconsin-Madison The same animal has calmed somewhat within a couple of minutes, and the pitches are now descending instead of ascending. Notice the noisy sounds, and the upward-trending pitch of other sounds. In contrast, monkeys that heard "affiliative" music reduced their movements and increased their feeding behavior - both signs of a calming effect.Īn upset monkey is mobbing a human. 1) in the journal Biology Letters, reported that the monkeys could tell the difference: For five minutes after hearing fear music, the monkeys displayed more symptoms of anxiety and increased their movement. The music was inspired by sounds the tamarins make to convey two opposite emotions: threats and/or fear, and affiliation, a friendly, safe and happy condition. The catch? These South American monkeys are essentially immune to human music, but they respond appropriately to "monkey music," 30-second clips composed by Teie on the basis of actual monkey calls. A new report by Charles Snowdon, a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and musician David Teie of the University of Maryland shows that a monkey called the cotton-top tamarin indeed responds to music. ![]()
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