Monkeys May Tune In to Basic Melodies
By Bruce Bower
Some tunes stick in one’s memory, sometimes with remarkable persistence. Think of “Happy Birthday,” “Old MacDonald,” and “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” In laboratory experiments, even infants exhibit a keen memory for such songs.
A dozen of these childhood classics prove as memorable to rhesus monkeys as they do to people, a new study finds. This represents the first well-controlled demonstration that any nonhuman animal perceives simple melodies, say psychologist Anthony A. Wright of the University of Texas Medical School at Houston and his colleagues. Their report appears in the September Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.