Marmosets Can Perceive Pitch Too

Plants and Animals





Photo credit:

Yunyan Wang/Johns Hopkins Medicine

Common marmosets, Callithrix jacchus, are vocal little monkeys from South America with a hearing range similar to that of humans. And like us, it appears these New World primates can perceive pitch.

The findings, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week, suggest that certain aspects of pitch perception emerged early in the evolution of primates. Our species have been separated by at least 40 million years.