Chimps

Previous experiments with chimps have found that they generally prefer silence over music, but it turns out that maybe scientists were simply playing the wrong playlists. Chimps don’t like Western music. That much has been shown by previous studies that focused on playing them that type of music. And a new study found they aren’t big fans of Japanese music, either. But when played African or Indian music in their enclosure, a recent study found chimps gravitated toward the areas where they could best hear it. The study wasn’t meant to show some cultural bias or animosity toward Kelly Clarkson in chimps, but to investigate how they respond differently to varied musical patterns that are common in cultural music. “Our objective was not to find a preference for different cultures’ music. We used cultural music from Africa, India and Japan to pinpoint specific acoustic properties,” said study coauthor Frans de Waal, PhD, of Emory University. “Past research has focused only on Western music and has not addressed the very different