Sound-induced motion in chimpanzees does not imply shared ancestry for music or dance
- aDepartment of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138;
- bDepartment of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138;
- cInstitute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST), 31080 Toulouse Cedex 6, France;
- dData Science Initiative, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138;
- eSchool of Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington 6012, New Zealand
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Hattori and Tomonaga (1) report that seven captive chimpanzees moved in response to piano sounds, more so than in silence. On this basis, they argue, “some biological foundation for dancing existed in the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees ∼6 million years ago.”
Music's universality suggests it has deep phylogenetic roots (2). Understanding music-like behavior in nonhuman animals is therefore valuable for understanding the evolution of music (3). But such a claim of shared ancestry for music or dance is unjustified, for three reasons.
First, the effects were heterogenous across a small sample (1). The most active chimpanzee (Akira) moved more than 50 times longer than the least active chimpanzee. Such dramatic variability …
↵1To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: sam{at}wjh.harvard.edu or mila_bertolo{at}g.harvard.edu.
References
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- Y. Hattori,
- M. Tomonaga
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- S. A. Mehr et al
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- ↵
- H. Honing,
- F. L. Bouwer,
- L. Prado,
- H. Merchant
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- ↵
- ↵
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- J. Crast,
- M. Bloomsmith,
- J. Perlman,
- T. Meeker,
- C. Remillard
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