Universal/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images Susan Backlinie
swims as the great white shark rises toward her in publicity art
for the 1975 film Jaws. Susan Backlinie swims as the great white
shark rises toward her in publicity art for the 1975 film Jaws.
Universal/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images DUH-duh ... DUH-duh
... DUH-duh! Like those ominous bars of music signaling the
approaching shark in Jaws, some of the most recognizable film
scores were designed to terrify us. But how do our brains
recognize that music is supposed to be scary? The answer lies in
our animal instincts, says UCLA evolutionary biologist Daniel
Blumstein, whose research is published in the latest issue of
the journal Biology Letters. Another Scary Pair Of Jaws? A
yellow-bellied marmot's scream helped a scientist figure out the
secret to scary sounds. Blumstein's study of human sound
perception began in an unlikely place: a community of yellow-
bellied marmots in Colorado. "The thing that struck me was that
every once in a while when we