20 July 2009

The funky gibbon

Jonathan Balcombe (2006) quotes Eugene Lindon (2003):
There is a world of difference between what a scientist can publish and what we encounter in the world.
The discovery that a female White-handed Gibbon living in captivity bangs a door in time with her territorial song is described by Thomas Geissmann, a leading expert on gibbon conservation and behaviour, as 'tool use'.

Following Steven Mithen (2008), would it really hurt to describe this as a [very basic] kind of 'music making'?

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