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Science Quickly

Spider Monkeys Optimize Jungle Acoustics

Science Quickly

Scientific American

Science

4.2639 Ratings

🗓️ 4 April 2019

⏱️ 2 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The monkeys lower the pitch of their "whinnies" when they're far from the rest of their group, which might help the calls travel further through jungle foliage. Christopher Intagliata reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Understanding the human body is a team effort. That's where the Yachtel group comes in.

0:05.8

Researchers at Yachtolt have been delving into the secrets of probiotics for 90 years.

0:11.0

Yacold also partners with nature portfolio to advance gut microbiome science through the global grants for gut health, an investigator-led research program.

0:19.6

To learn more about Yachtolt, visitacolkot.co.j.j.

0:23.9

That's y-A-K-U-L-T dot-C-O-J-P.

0:28.4

When it comes to a guide for your gut, count on Yacolt.

0:33.7

This is Scientific American's 60-second science.

0:37.2

I'm Christopher in Taliatta.

0:39.0

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

0:42.9

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

0:47.3

It's simply keeping up with the monkeys.

0:48.9

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.

0:59.0

Jose Domingo Ordonez-Gomez. He's a primatologist at the German primate center in Göttingen.

1:04.5

The reason he was pursuing 35 spider monkeys through the rainforests of southern Mexico was to record

1:10.0

their winnies.

1:12.2

By analyzing more than 500 calls, he found that when a monkey was separated from the group

1:17.0

by more than 40 meters or 130 feet, it produced a lower-pitched call than when the same monkey

1:24.2

was nearby the group. Rodonias Gomez thinks the pitch choice may be because

1:29.3

lower frequency calls are better suited to travel long distances through Dunce Jungle.

1:34.3

The findings are in the journal Plus One.

1:37.3

Rodonias Gomez also found that other spider monkeys responded back more quickly

1:41.3

when they heard one of the low-pitch calls compared to a regular

...

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