Chimps and Humans Share Key Traits in Musical Rhythm

Swift Summary

• Research suggests that chimps share fundamental rhythmic traits with humans, possibly indicating musicality evolved in a common ancestor of the two species.
• Catherine Hobaiter and her team studied 371 drumming examples across two chimp subspecies: western chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) and eastern chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii).
• Chimps use their hands and feet to drum on buttress roots when resting, traveling, or threat signaling, often repeating rhythms.
• Drumming by chimps employs isochrony – regularly spaced hits resembling clock ticking – a pattern seen in human musical traditions.
• Subspecies show distinct drumming variations.Eastern chimps alternate rhythm spacing while western chimps evenly space theirs. Western chimps also drum faster and integrate hits with vocal pant-hoots earlier.
• Researchers posit drumming differences could represent cultural patterns within subspecies rather than individual quirks.
• Chimpanzee rhythms highlight basic shared building blocks of human musical rhythm but not advanced complexities of modern human music.
• The study challenges earlier beliefs that rhythmicity was unique to humans.

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