Abstract

To investigate whether monkeys perceive relative pitch, the author trained 3 Japanese monkeys (Macaca
fuscata) to detect changes from rising to falling contours of 3-tone sequences. Tone sequences were
presented serially with transposition, so monkeys were urged to attend to cues other than the absolute
frequency of a component tone. Results from probe tests with novel sequences showed that monkeys
discriminated by the relative pitch when the frequency ranges of sequences were within the training
range, showing a similar tendency as birds in previous studies (e.g., S. H. Hulse, J. Cynx, & J. Humpal,
1984).