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Chimpanzee drumming: a spontaneous performance with characteristics of human musical drumming

Despite the quintessential role that music plays in human societies by enabling us to release and share emotions with others, traces of its evolutionary origins in other species remain scarce. Drumming like humans whilst producing music is practically unheard of in our most closely related species,...

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Autores principales: Dufour, Valérie, Poulin, Nicolas, Charlotte Curé, Sterck, Elisabeth H. M.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4469965/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26080900
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep11320
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author Dufour, Valérie
Poulin, Nicolas
Charlotte Curé,
Sterck, Elisabeth H. M.
author_facet Dufour, Valérie
Poulin, Nicolas
Charlotte Curé,
Sterck, Elisabeth H. M.
author_sort Dufour, Valérie
collection PubMed
description Despite the quintessential role that music plays in human societies by enabling us to release and share emotions with others, traces of its evolutionary origins in other species remain scarce. Drumming like humans whilst producing music is practically unheard of in our most closely related species, the great apes. Although beating on tree roots and body parts does occur in these species, it has, musically speaking, little in common with human drumming. Researchers suggest that for manual beating in great apes to be compared to human drumming, it should at least be structurally even, a necessary quality to elicit entrainment (beat induction in others). Here we report an episode of spontaneous drumming by a captive chimpanzee that approaches the structural and contextual characteristics usually found in musical drumming. This drumming differs from most beating episodes reported in this species by its unusual duration, the lack of any obvious context, and rhythmical properties that include long-lasting and dynamically changing rhythms, but also evenness and leisureliness. This performance is probably the first evidence that our capacity to drum is shared with our closest relatives.
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spelling pubmed-44699652015-06-18 Chimpanzee drumming: a spontaneous performance with characteristics of human musical drumming Dufour, Valérie Poulin, Nicolas Charlotte Curé, Sterck, Elisabeth H. M. Sci Rep Article Despite the quintessential role that music plays in human societies by enabling us to release and share emotions with others, traces of its evolutionary origins in other species remain scarce. Drumming like humans whilst producing music is practically unheard of in our most closely related species, the great apes. Although beating on tree roots and body parts does occur in these species, it has, musically speaking, little in common with human drumming. Researchers suggest that for manual beating in great apes to be compared to human drumming, it should at least be structurally even, a necessary quality to elicit entrainment (beat induction in others). Here we report an episode of spontaneous drumming by a captive chimpanzee that approaches the structural and contextual characteristics usually found in musical drumming. This drumming differs from most beating episodes reported in this species by its unusual duration, the lack of any obvious context, and rhythmical properties that include long-lasting and dynamically changing rhythms, but also evenness and leisureliness. This performance is probably the first evidence that our capacity to drum is shared with our closest relatives. Nature Publishing Group 2015-06-17 /pmc/articles/PMC4469965/ /pubmed/26080900 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep11320 Text en Copyright © 2015, Macmillan Publishers Limited http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
spellingShingle Article
Dufour, Valérie
Poulin, Nicolas
Charlotte Curé,
Sterck, Elisabeth H. M.
Chimpanzee drumming: a spontaneous performance with characteristics of human musical drumming
title Chimpanzee drumming: a spontaneous performance with characteristics of human musical drumming
title_full Chimpanzee drumming: a spontaneous performance with characteristics of human musical drumming
title_fullStr Chimpanzee drumming: a spontaneous performance with characteristics of human musical drumming
title_full_unstemmed Chimpanzee drumming: a spontaneous performance with characteristics of human musical drumming
title_short Chimpanzee drumming: a spontaneous performance with characteristics of human musical drumming
title_sort chimpanzee drumming: a spontaneous performance with characteristics of human musical drumming
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4469965/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26080900
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep11320
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