In this combination of photos provided by researchers, a wild male chimpanzee drums on a buttress tree while producing a pant-hoot call as he joins his groupmates in the Budongo Forest of Uganda in May 2017. (Adrian Soldati via AP)
In this photo provided by researchers, a wild male chimpanzee drums on a buttress tree while producing a pant-hoot call as he joins his groupmates in the Budongo Forest of Uganda in May 2017. (Adrian Soldati via AP)
In this photo provided by researchers, a wild adult male chimpanzee, the alpha of his community, produces a pant-hoot call early in the morning, as in the background a subadult male, his mother, and younger brother join in with a chorused pant-hoot in the Budongo Forest of Uganda in October 2018. (Adrian Soldati via AP)
In this photo provided by researchers, a wild adult male chimpanzee makes a pant-hoot call while rocking and stomping on a tree as part of a dominance display in the Budongo Forest of Uganda in Februay 2019. (Adrian Soldati via AP)
In this photo provided by researchers, a wild male chimpanzee produces a pant-hoot call to elicit a response from distant group members and reunite with them in the Budongo Forest of Uganda in June 2016. (Adrian Soldati via AP)
In this combination of photos provided by researchers, a wild male chimpanzee drums on a buttress tree while producing a pant-hoot call as he joins his groupmates in the Budongo Forest of Uganda in May 2017. (Adrian Soldati via AP)
Chimpanzees drum with regular rhythm when they beat on tree trunks, a new study shows.
last shared a common ancestor around 6 million years ago. Scientists suspect this ancient ancestor must have been a drummer — using beats to communicate.
“Our ability to produce rhythm — and to use it in our social worlds — that seems to be something that predates humans being human,” said study co-author Cat Hobaiter, a University of St Andrews primatologist.
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Previous research has shown that chimps have their own signature drumming style. A new analysis of 371 bouts of chimpanzee drumming demonstrates that the chimps “clearly play their instruments — the tree trunks — with regular rhythms,” said University of Amsterdam music cognition researcher Henkjan Honing, who was not involved in the study.
When bounding through the jungle, chimps will often grab hold of the tall buttress roots of rainforest trees. Sometimes they pound them several times to create low-frequency sounds that can be heard for a kilometer or more through the forest.
Scientists believe that the drumming is a form of long-distance communication, perhaps to alert other chimps where one chimp is waiting or the direction it is traveling.
“It’s a way of socially checking in,” said Hobaiter, adding that each chimp has its own “individual signature — a pattern of beats that allows you to recognize who’s producing that drumming.”
The new work showed that chimps from different regions of Africa drum with distinctly different rhythms, with western chimps preferring a more even beat while eastern chimps used varied short and long intervals between beats. The research was published Friday in the journal .
It’s well-known that chimps use tools such as rocks to crack open nuts and sticks to “fish” termites from their mounds. Tree roots can also be tools, the researchers say.
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Chimps are selective about which roots they pound, said co-author Catherine Crockford, a primatologist at the CNRS Institute for Cognitive Sciences in France. Certain shapes and wood varieties create sounds that travel well through dense jungle.
The drummings are likely “a very important way to make contact,” she said.
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