MEOWTZART: David Teie recorded music that incorporated feline vocal samples in his bathroom/recording studio.COURTESY OF DANIELLA TEIE
After decades of studying primate behavior at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Charles Snowdon closed his colony of cotton-top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus) in 2008. The little monkeys, looking like better-groomed versions of Spike from the movie Gremlins, had given Snowdon a glimpse into various aspects of their social lives, from parenting and social learning to hormones and vocal communication. But one of his last studies on the species took him in a totally different direction.
Several years earlier, Snowdon had received a call completely out of the blue from a cellist with a scientific bent named David Teie, who had been studying the various components of music and how each relates to the human experience and affects our emotions. Take pulse, for example—the maternal heartbeat to ...
