PREVIEW

Mon-Keyth Moon! Chimpanzees Are Expert Drummers, Scientists Find. Eat your heart out Dairy Milk gorilla, because chimpanzees are expert drummers, according to new research from scientists. A team of cognitive scientists and evolutionary biologists finds that chimpanzees drum rhythmically, using regular spacing between drum hits. Their results, publishing in the Cell Press journal Current Biology in May, show that eastern and western chimpanzees—two distinct subspecies—drum with distinguishable rhythms. The researchers say these findings suggest that the building blocks of human musicality arose in a common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans. “Based on our previous work, we expected that western chimpanzees would use more hits and drum more quickly than eastern chimpanzees,” says lead author Vesta Eleuteri of the University of Vienna. “But we didn't expect to see such clear differences in rhythm or to find that their drumming rhythms shared such clear similarities with human music.” The researchers suggest that the chimps use these percussive patterns to send information over both long and short distances. They also found that western chimpanzees hit their “drums” more, using a faster tempo, and integrated their drumming earlier in their pant-hoot vocalizations. “Making music is a fundamental part of what it means to be human—but we don’t know for how long we have been making music,” says Hobaiter.