'Yoda' primates sing duets like opera stars - Livescience.com

Tiny, monkeylike creatures called tarsiers sing duets together in the style of opera singers — but those who fail to hit the high notes may also flop at attracting mates, scientists recently suggested. .

To learn more about these vocal performances, scientists eavesdropped on tarsiers in Tangkoko National Park in Sulawesi, Indonesia in July and August 2018, and captured 50 recordings of 14 pairs of Gursky’s spectral tarsiers (Tarsius spectrumgurskyae) singing their morning duets.

Measuring just 3.5 to 6 inches (9 to 15 centimeters) tall and weighing no more than 7 ounces (200 grams), Gursky’s spectral tarsiers live only on Sulawesi, an Indonesian island east of Borneo.

"The duets exhibit acoustic trade-offs in note rate and note bandwidth — the range of frequencies within a note," said Isabel Comella, lead study author and a researcher at the K?

The tarsiers that sing more slowly do so with the widest range of frequencies within a note, while the tarsiers that repeat notes more quickly only appear capable of a narrower range of frequencies within a note, Comella told Live Science in an email.

The authors hypothesize that rapidly singing notes containing a broad range of frequencies during a duet may be more physiologically and neurologically taxing for the singer, with only physically fit individuals able to do so. .

Other primates are known to sing duets, including a type of lemur called the indri (Indri indri), titi monkeys in the Callicebus genus, and northern gray gibbons (Hylobates funereus), according to the authors.

Prior studies into primate duets suggest that this behavior may be used for finding or guarding a mate, defending territory or strengthening social bonds, though further research is required to determine exactly why tarsiers are performing these duets, the study authors reported.

It could be a unique behavior to the tarsiers in Sulawesi, according to the authors.

Tarsiers in the Philippines and Borneo are more solitary and don’t engage in duets as regularly. .

Though Gursky’s spectral tarsiers sing their duets in the range of human hearing, the primates also vocalize in the ultrasonic range, which researchers are currently investigating.

“We hope that with the advent of low-cost autonomous recording units and even smartphones we can start to learn more about the vocal behavior of tarsiers across Sulawesi," Clink said.