Cha-cha-chimp? Ape study suggests urge to dance is prehuman

[Pluvious]

I've always suspected grooving to rhythms was an innate, primal trait.

Not the latest teen band sensation, but a spectacle far more impressive: the moves of a group of chimpanzees that scientists believe shed light on the prehistoric origins of human dancing.

The researchers in Kyoto filmed the chimps performing the movements in a music booth attached to their enclosure where the apes could go to rock out to piano sounds played in the room.

None of the chimps had been taught to groove, and they received no rewards for doing so in the study, but regardless they broke out into spontaneous bodily expression when the beats started.

“Chimpanzees dance to some extent in the same way as humans,” said Yuko Hattori, a researcher at Kyoto University who studied the dancing chimps. Most of the apes swayed their bodies, though claps and foot taps featured too, primarily among the females.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/dec/23/cha-cha-chimp-ape-study-suggests-urge-to-dance-is-prehuman

[tblue37]

1. K&R. I love that they sing, too! nt

[Donkees]

2. Cockatoo named Snowball ...

"We've discovered a cockatoo named Snowball that dances to the beat of human music," said Dr Aniruddh Patel of The Neurosciences Institute in San Diego, California, lead author of one of the studies.

"Using a controlled experiment, we've shown that if the music speeds up or slows down across a wide range, he adjusts the tempo of his dancing to stay synchronised to the beat."

One of Snowball's favourite dancing tunes is none other than the Backstreet Boys' "Everybody", he added.

"For a long time, people have thought that the ability to move to a beat was unique to humans," said Adena Schachner of Harvard University, who led the other study.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/5252413/Birds-can-dance-in-time-to-music.html