Monkeys Have Rhythm and Can Tap Along to the Beat (with a Little Help From the Backstreet Boys)

These Monkeys Hint at an Evolutionary Musical Mystery

You might not be the smoothest dancer, but humans are considered uniquely skilled at spontaneously grooving along to music. The ability to move in time with a beat is relatively rare in the animal kingdom. It was long thought to be limited to species that can mimic sounds—a feat known as complex vocal learning. The majority of nonhuman primates, which include our closest living relatives, the chimps, lack this skill. Nautilus Members enjoy an a…

Monkeys have rhythm and can tap along to the beat (with a little help from the Backstreet Boys)

They may not yet be kings of the swingers, but macaque monkeys can keep time to music and move to the beat. Well, at least two adult macaques can, who were trained by researchers to tap along to different kinds of music. Their work challenges the so-called vocal-learning hypothesis, which holds that only species with complex vocal learning, like humans and songbirds, can spontaneously move to the groove. Macaques are not vocal learners.