2-minute read

If one of your New Year’s resolutions is to polish your signature dance move (and we know you have one), researchers in Japan and Sweden offer some thought-provoking new insights into the ancient origins of your distinctive locomotive stylings. The integration of movement and sound, resulting in that splendid thing we do, known as dancing, is widespread across human cultures, dating back as far as 1.8 million years. While animals in the wild, including elephants, kangaroos, and rabbits produce drumming and stomping sounds to communicate, and some species of animals in captivity such as sea lions and parrots have been trained to move to a beat, it was believed that homo sapiens were unique in our ability to spontaneously produce rhythmic movements in response to musical sounds.

A recent analysis from Kyoto University exploring the biological foundation of music-induced movement in non-human primates points to a gradually developing connection between motor and auditory areas of the brain over millennia. In a controlled study, chimpanzees voluntarily responded to both random and regular beats with rhythmic swaying, implying a possible evolutionary link to musicality that may have developed from a common ancestor around 6 million years ago. Although male chimpanzees in the wild drum, make sounds with objects, chorus in groups, and display rhythmic movement in response to heavy rainfall, they have not been observed to interact in a synchronous manner with musical sounds. However, the chimpanzees in the Kyoto study did move toward the sound of the beat and engage by swaying, hand-clapping, foot-tapping, and vocalization. Unlike humans who show no gender-related differences in musical ability, consistent with communication hierarchies within their patriarchal societies, male chimpanzees were more likely to get into the swing of things than females.

Researchers at Lund University have come up with an alternative theory, that the roots of our rhythmic behavior, while still evolutionary, may lie closer to home—in our mother’s ability to walk the upright walk. Compared to the irregular gait of non-human primate quadrupeds like the chimpanzee, the footfall of human bipeds is evenly paced at around 120 beats per minute, mimicking universally recognized tempos. Because the consistent sound and vibration of the mother’s footfall is heard and felt by a developing human fetus beginning at about 24 weeks, this is thought to have a strong influence on the formation of musical abilities, more so than the sound of the maternal heartbeat which is similar across primates. The researchers have theorized that the cadence of footfall is encoded into the limbic system of the human fetal brain. This bit of grey matter is primarily responsible for emotion and memory, which is why it is believed we respond positively as newborns and in later life to musical rhythms because they closely resemble the sounds we perceived in the environment of the womb. If you get that “I know this one” feeling when you hear a regularly timed beat, you may have picked it up in the interior maternal soundscape before you were born courtesy of your mother who walked an average of 10,000 equally spaced steps in a typical day of roaming. And if you often feel compelled to get up to get down, you might have mom to thank for that as well.

While chimps appear to have some limited ability to move rhythmically, both studies indicate that humans are still top banana when it comes to synchronizing to a beat; however, further investigation may eventually reveal that we’ll have to make room on the dance floor for our swinging friends.

As a lucky member of the community of living beings who can dance if they want to, here’s hoping you find your idiosyncratic joy-inducing groove in 2020. Beaming out positive vibes of transformative change from Weekly Wondrous for a shiny New Year ahead. Would that not be nice!