Can animals hear as we do? New research says marmosets can distinguish pitch, which also throws into question when specified hearing came into play during evolution, according to Discovery News.
Research conducted by Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and published by the National Academy of Science said that despite the previously held belief that animals do not share the same developed perceptions in hearing pitch, the modern day marmoset has all the "primary features of complex pitch perception mechanisms" that we do.
"Until now, we didn't think any animal species, including monkeys, perceived it the way we do. Now we know that marmosets, and likely other primate ancestors, do," said lead researcher for the study Xiaoqin Wang.
The new information also suggests that humans may have developed the capacity to differentiate low and high notes much sooner than previously estimated.
"In addition to the evolutionary implications of this discovery, I'm looking forward to what we will be able to learn about human pitch perception now that we have a primate relative we can study behaviorally and physiologically," said Wang. "Now we can explore questions about what goes wrong in people who are tone deaf and whether perfect pitch is an inherited or learned trait."
