Songbirds share a human sense of rhythm, but is this musical ability repeated in non-human mammals? An international study conducted with lemurs indri indri, about critical extinction hazard, that proves yes. The results were published in the journal Current Biology.
the scientists of the Max Planck Institute of Psycholinguistics (Netherlands) and the turin university (Italy) looked for musical traits in other species to understand how rhythmic abilities originated and evolved in humans.
To find out if non-human mammals have sense of rhythm, the team studied one of the few ‘singing’ primates, the lemur, for 12 years in Madagascar indri indri, and so they checked if their songs had categorical rhythms, that is, universal patterns that seem to be found in everyone musical cultures human.
An easy rhythm to recognize
Rhythm is categorical when the intervals between sounds are exactly the same length (1:1 beat) or doubled (1:2 beat). This makes a song easily recognizable, even if it is sung at different speeds, they explain from the Max Planck Institute.
Rhythm is categorical when the intervals between sounds are exactly the same length or double duration
The researchers recorded the songs of 20 groups of indri (39 animals) that lived in their habitat Natural. Thus, they found that members of an Indri family group generally sing together, in harmonized duets and choirs, and found that the songs of these animals had the classic rhythmic categories (both 1:1 and 1:2) as well as the typical ones. ritardando or deceleration found in various musical traditions.
In addition, they noted that the male and female songs had a time different but with the same rhythm.
Indri’s song, in danger of extinction
According to the first author, Chiara by GregorioThis is the first evidence of this “universal rhythm” in a non-human mammal.
The male and female songs had a different tempo, but showed the same rhythm.
This skill may have evolved independently between the singing speciesThe last common ancestor between humans and Indri lived 77.5 million years ago, according to experts.
The next step for scientists is to find evidence of other musical patterns in indri and other species. In this sense, Andrea Ravignani, a co-author of the study, encourages other researchers to collect data on the indri and other endangered animals, “before it’s too late to witness their impressive singing demonstrations.”
.