In yet another example that separates man from the animals,
scientists have recently discovered that tamarin monkeys have no
taste for the consonant tones that mostly make up music.
While it is true that previous
research has revealed that macaque monkeys and songbirds possess
the ability to distinguish between consonant sounds and dissonant
sounds, the question of whether or not animals actually prefer
consonant tones had, until now, been unanswered.
"This is the first time that a lack of preference for
consonance has been shown in primates," said Isabelle Peretz,
a psychologist from the University of Montreal, Canada.
The tests they conducted were no less creative then they were humorous.
Placing the tamarins in a V-shaped chamber, Josh McDermott of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Marc Hauser of Harvard
University played different types of sounds in either end of it,
watching to see as to which side the monkeys preferred.
Before the experiment, however, the researchers played soft static
on one side of the chamber, and and loud static on the
other. They then played noises of feeding chirps on one
side, and tamarin distress calls on the other. As would be
expected, the tamarins favored the softer static noise and feeding
chirps.
So, having proven that the monkeys showed preferences, they played
consonant sounds on one side, and clashing notes on the
other. The animals, however, spent equal amounts of time on
both sides of the chamber. The results of their study are
reported online in Cognition.
McDermott still holds to the possibility that other primates,
such as chimpanzees, might still share some sort of musical
appreciation with people, but in the end, he concludes:
"I would place my bets on the fact that it's uniquely
human."
Former Atheist Turns Toward God
by Jonathan
Drake
S: ABC News (12-9-04)
- BPNews.net (12-22-04)
"My
whole life has been guided by the principle of Plato's Socrates:
Follow the evidence, wherever it leads."
It came as a complete shock to many. A reknown British
philosophy professor, he had been a leading champion of atheism
for more than a half-century. Now, however, he believes in
God, more or less, based on scientific evidence.
His name is Robert Flew, and in a new video released just recently
(Has Science Discovered God?) he comments that biologists'
investigation of DNA "has shown, by the almost unbelievable
complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce (life),
that intelligence must have been involved."
Flew is no Christian, nor Muslim, nor a believer in any particular
faith as of yet, but he best labels himself a deist, akin to
Thomas Jefferson, whose God was not actively involved in the lives
of people. In his view, God "could be a person in the
sense of a being that has intelligence and a purpose, I
suppose."
Flew told The Associated Press his current ideas have some
similarity with American "intelligent design" theorists,
who see evidence for a guiding force in the construction of the
universe.
Christian apologist Gary Habermas, who has debated Flew many times
over the years regarding the existence of God and the resurrection
of Jesus Christ, was one of the first people Robert Flew spoke to
after changing his mind. Habermas had actually seen it
coming. "In September 2000, that's about the earliest
indication that I had that he was changing. He wrote me a
long letter, quite an incredible letter, where at several points
he conceded the evidence for [theism and Christianity]."
"He told me he was really rethinking theism and had
corresponded with [naturalistic scientist Richard] Dawkins and was
putting the ID arguments up against what Dawkins was saying and
trying to compare the arguments," Habermas said.
"And he was going back and forth as to whether he should be a
theist or not."
After Flew's "God-belief" announcement in December of
2004, critics accused him of changing his mind suddenly.
Rather, it took 4 years.
"The
first sign that I've seen of him changing goes back to the fall of
2000. So he's been thinking about these things for four years,"
said Habermas.
In
any case, Robert Flew is a different man, one who has taken his
principles of Plato to come to a belief in a Higher Being.
Mystery Whale At Large
by
Josef
Long
S: Yahoo! News (12-8-04)
It has a voice unlike any of
its whale kind, and has been
wandering the Pacific
ocean for
the past 12 years,
according to American
marine biologists.
Its calls are like those of a baleen whale, but still do
not correctly match any other known species. It sings at a
frequency of around 52 hertz, while others usually call at
frequencies of between 15 and 20 hertz.
Using signals recorded by the US navy to track submarines,
biologists have also been able to detect that the mammal does not
follow the migration patterns of any other species either.
Due to aging, the calls of the whale, which roams the ocean every
autumn and winter, have deepened slightly, but are still
recognizable.
The studies have been conducted by scientists at the Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, USA.
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