This half monkey turns out to have a sense of rhythm

Man is not the only one with musical talent. This cute lemur can also do something.

We know that some animals share the sense of rhythm with humans. Consider, for example, certain songbirds. Still, it is a rare trait among non-human mammals. In a new study, researchers decided to look into primates’ musical skills. And that leads to an interesting discovery.

Human musicality

Man is not the only one with musical talent. Some animals also appear to have a sense of measure. For example, think of cockatoo Snowball dancing to the music of The Backstreet Boys and Ronan the sea lion headbanging to music by Earth, Wind & Fire. “There has been an interest in understanding how human musicality has evolved for some time,” said researcher Andrea Ravignani. “By looking for musical characteristics among other species, we can build an ‘evolutionary tree’ of musical characteristics. And that way we can understand how a sense of rhythm originated and evolved.”

India

To find out whether non-human mammals have a sense of rhythm, the team decided to study one of the few ‘singing’ primates: the critically endangered lemur indri (Indri indri). This lemur is the largest living prosimian and is only found in the northeast of Madagascar. The vocals consist of a series of screaming and crying. The researchers wanted to find out whether the melodious calls of these prosimians — which can be heard more than 2 kilometers away and can last up to 240 seconds — have a certain characteristic rhythm also found in human musical cultures.

For twelve years, researchers visited the rainforest of Madagascar to study the songs of the prosimian. The researchers recorded the melodious calls of twenty populations of indri (comprising 39 animals) living in their natural habitat. Notably, members of the same family tend to sing together at times, in harmonized duets and choruses.

Rhythm

After years of research, the scientists make a remarkable discovery. Because the indri indeed appears to have a sense of rhythm. Not only did the researchers discover the so-called categorical rhythm in the songs, they also found features of the typical ‘ritardando’ (slowing tempo in music). Although males and females have a different tempo in their songs, they do show the same rhythm.

common ancestor

With the study, the researchers show that non-human mammals can also have a sense of rhythm. Why do they have that? That is a good question. Unfortunately, we can only speculate about that at the moment. However, the researchers suspect that the ability probably evolved independently, since the last common ancestor of humans and indri lived about 77.5 million years ago.

The researchers hope to find out in follow-up studies whether other species also have a sense of rhythm. They also encourage other scientists to collect data on indri and other endangered species “before it’s too late to witness their breathtaking song performances,” they conclude.