This is Scientific American's 60 Second Science.

I'm Christine Herman.

Got a minute?

The ability to distinguish between sounds of varying pitch makes people capable of producing and

understanding speech and music and the way we are able to process pitch has been

thought to be unique to our big-brain species But now there's evidence that a tiny monkey, the common

marmosetet from Brazil, can distinguish pitch the same way we do. That's according to a study

in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Ten years ago, researchers identified a region of the Marmoset brain that appeared to process pitch,

but they needed to confirm that the animals did indeed notice changes in pitch,

which presented a challenge.

They had to find a way to get the animal to indicate that it had heard something,

so they train the marmosets to respond to a change in pitch with a behavior.

Specifically, they would lick a water spout.

The researchers then had the animals listen to a series of notes with the same pitch, and at random they'd change it up.

Just like for example when I say maa maa maa maa

at some points that make a pitch a little higher.

Johns Hopkins neuroscientists Shaush Wong, lead researcher of the study.

The actual difference in pitch, he says, was much smaller than that.

But you get the idea.

And when an animal hear that change, it will leak the water spout to indicate the

hear the difference. Which the miniscule monkeys indeed did. Because both

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