Humans are obsessed with the idea that animals might like our tunes. We put headphones on cows to see if they produce more milk and play Mozart for plants, hoping for a growth spurt. But when it involves our closest relatives, the conversation gets weird. People talk about music of the monkeys like it’s a secret jungle rave, but the reality is way more fascinating—and a bit bruising for our egos.
Most monkeys don't actually like our music. At all.
Actually, to a cotton-top tamarin, your favorite Metallica track or even a soothing Bach cello suite is basically just annoying background noise. It’s "human-centric." We assume because we have a biological response to a 4/4 beat or a major chord, a monkey should too. Science says we're mostly wrong.
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The Myth of the Universal Groove
We've all seen those viral videos. A guy plays a flute for a group of macaques, or someone brings a boombox to a sanctuary, and the monkeys seem "entranced." It’s a great clip for social media. It isn't science.
Researchers like Charles Snowdon at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have spent years debunking the idea that music is a universal language across species. In one of his most famous studies, he found that tamarins were completely indifferent to human music. They didn't care about Mozart. They didn't care about Nine Inch Nails. The only thing that got a rise out of them was a specific type of "monkey music" designed specifically for their vocal range and heart rate.
Think about it. A tamarin’s heart beats much faster than ours. Their vocalizations are an octave or three higher. Why would they find a slow, bass-heavy human ballad relaxing? To them, it might sound like a low-frequency rumble signifying a predator or a distant storm.
Species-Specific Soundscapes: How to Write a Monkey Hit
If you want to create real music of the monkeys, you have to stop thinking like a human. You have to think about pulse and pitch.
Snowdon worked with a composer named David Teie to create "species-specific" music. Teie didn't just play some random high-pitched notes. He looked at the acoustic features of monkey calls. When tamarins are excited, their calls have a certain staccato rhythm. When they are calm, the tones are longer and more fluid.
Teie composed pieces that mimicked these patterns.
The results were wild. When the tamarins heard "threat-based" monkey music, they got visibly agitated and began scanning their environment for danger. When they heard "affiliative" or "calming" monkey music, they actually relaxed. They ate more. They hung out together. It was the first real evidence that primates have a functional equivalent to music, but it’s just tuned to a different frequency.
It's sorta like trying to listen to a radio station that’s slightly off-set. We hear the static; they hear the melody.
Why Chimps Might Be the Exception
While smaller monkeys seem to ignore our playlists, chimpanzees and bonobos are a bit different. They’re our closest cousins, after all.
Some studies suggest that chimpanzees actually prefer silence over "pop" or "classical" music, but they might have a soft spot for certain rhythms. In a 2014 study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, researchers found that chimpanzees showed a preference for African and Indian rhythmic patterns. They seemed to dislike the strong, predictable "downbeats" typical of Western music.
Maybe they find the "boom-chick-boom-chick" of a pop song too aggressive?
Honestly, we're still figuring this out. There is also evidence of "drumming" behavior in the wild. Male chimpanzees will hit the buttress roots of trees to create a booming sound that travels for miles. It’s rhythmic. It’s intentional. It’s arguably the most primitive form of music of the monkeys. They aren't doing it to dance; they're doing it to show off their strength and keep the group coordinated.
The Bonobo Beat
Kanzi, the famous bonobo known for his use of a lexigram keyboard, once jammed with Peter Gabriel. It wasn't just a publicity stunt. Researchers observed that Kanzi could keep a beat.
This suggests that the capacity for "entrainment"—the ability to sync your movements to an external rhythm—isn't uniquely human. It’s just buried deep in the primate lineage. If you give a bonobo a drum, they won't just hit it. They’ll hit it with a sense of timing. That’s a massive distinction in the animal kingdom. Most animals can't do that. A dog might bark at a song, but it won't bark on the beat.
The Dark Side: Using Sound as a Stressor
We have to be careful. Because we find music "healing," we often blast it in zoos or laboratories thinking we’re doing the animals a favor.
If the music of the monkeys isn't calibrated to their biology, it’s just noise pollution. Constant exposure to human-range frequencies can spike cortisol levels in captive primates. Imagine being trapped in a room where someone is constantly playing a high-pitched dog whistle or a sub-woofer that vibrates your chest. You’d go crazy.
Zoo enrichment programs are finally starting to catch on. Instead of playing "Easy Listening" radio, modern keepers are experimenting with "soundscapes"—recordings of rainfall, insects, and specific primate-tuned compositions.
Can Monkeys Make Their Own Music?
Not really. Not in the way we think of "art."
They don't sit around and compose sonatas. But they do engage in "duetting." In species like gibbons, mated pairs will sing complex, interlocking songs every morning. These duets can last for ten minutes and follow a specific structural pattern.
Is it music?
To a biologist, it’s a territorial display and a way to strengthen a pair bond. But to an ethnomusicologist, it has all the hallmarks of a performance. It has pitch, rhythm, and turn-taking.
Actionable Insights for the Primate Enthusiast
If you're working with primates or just interested in how they perceive the world, here’s the reality of the situation:
- Stop the Spotify: Don't play your favorite tunes for your pet or a zoo animal and expect them to enjoy it. You're likely just annoying them.
- Pitch Matters: If you want to engage a monkey, think high-frequency and fast-tempo for excitement, or long, sliding tones for calm.
- Respect the Silence: For many primates, the absence of human noise is the greatest luxury. Silence allows them to hear the subtle social cues of their own troop.
- Research David Teie: If you're genuinely curious about what scientifically backed music of the monkeys sounds like, look up his work. It sounds bizarre to us, but it's the closest thing we have to a "translation" of their emotional world.
The evolution of music is messy. It didn't just appear out of nowhere in humans. It started with the rhythmic drumming of a chimp and the morning duets of a gibbon. We just took those raw ingredients and added a whole lot of math and ego. When we look for music in monkeys, we're really just looking for the earliest echoes of ourselves.
Most people get this wrong because they want a Disney movie moment. They want the monkey to dance to "The Monkees." But the truth—that they have their own secret frequency—is much cooler.
To properly understand primate auditory enrichment, you should focus on acoustic ecology rather than musical entertainment. Start by observing the natural vocalizations of the species in question. Identify the dominant frequencies. From there, you can introduce subtle soundscapes that mimic those natural rhythms, ensuring the volume never exceeds the ambient noise of their natural habitat. This approach respects their biological boundaries while providing genuine cognitive stimulation.