This is not going to be scientific American sixty second science. I'm Christopher

and Tagyatta. The hardest part of chasing monkeys through the jungle isn't

the snakes. The snakes they are not going to attack you if you don't have contact with them.

It's simply keeping up with the monkeys. They are jumping from one tree to another tree so they don't

care if the landscape is difficult or if there is a river.

Jose Domingo or Donez Gomez, he's a primatologist at the German Primate center in Gottingen.

The reason he was pursuing 35 spider monkeys

through the rainforest of southern Mexico was to record their winnies. By

analyzing more than 500 calls he found that when a monkey was separated from the group by more than 40 meters or 130 feet, it produced a lower pitched call than when the same monkey was nearby the group.

Ordonez Gomez thinks the pitch choice may be because lower frequency calls are better suited to travel long distances through dense jungle.

The findings are in the journal

Plas 1. Ordonias Gomez also found that other spider monkeys responded back

more quickly when they heard one of the low pitch calls compared to a regular whinnie.

Perhaps he says because there's something about the deeper calls

that really gets the attention of eavesdropping monkeys.

It's a relatable feeling for any human primate who's heard a crying baby.

Thanks for listening.

For Scientific American 60 Second Science, I'm Christopher and Deliata.