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

Source: The Guardian

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

Chimpanzees seen clapping, tapping and swaying along to piano rhythms in a music booth

Ian Sample Science editor
@iansample
Mon 23 Dec 2019 20.00 GMT

Akira stands up and sways about. Pal is big on clapping. Ai is into tapping her foot, while Gon bangs and slaps the walls.

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.

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

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Related: Rhythmic swaying induced by sound in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)