14 DAY TRIAL // Macaque monkeys revealed a new way of interpreting the origins of music and language when scientists discovered that, when the primates drum on trees or logs, the same neural network involved in communicating is activated. This find seems to suggest that, in primates, the vocal and nonvocal communication systems may have had a common origin, LiveScience reports. In nature, these monkeys drum either by shaking branches or by stomping on logs.
The behavior is not unique to this species. Non-human primates have also been observed to drum in their natural environments, either on their own bodies (gorillas beat their chest and clap their hands), or on dead tree buttresses, like chimps do. Rhesus macaque monkeys maintain their habit in laboratory settings as well, using artificial objects to drum. For instance, cage doors are rattled or slammed against the walls, researchers report.
“Monkeys respond to drumming sounds as they would to vocalizations. Hence, drumming originated as a form of expression or communication, possibly in an ancestral species common to apes and old-world monkeys, early during primate evolution,” says Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics researcher Christoph Kayser, from the Institute's headquarters in Tubingen, Germany. Details of the monkey study appear in the September 28 online issue of the respected journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
“Humans convey information not only using speech, but also using other sounds that range in diversity from loud hand-clapping as applause, to the discrete knocking on a door before entering, to drumming that forms an important part of music,” Kayser explains.
“What is common between such sounds is that they are produced by repeated movements of the limbs so as to produce a structured sound made up of a series of periodic repeats, or beats. Humans use very complicated beat patterns by drumming, often in conjunction with musical rhythms. It is well known that such percussive beat generation is ubiquitous across human cultures, even used by tribal cultures,” he concludes by saying.