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Dancing chimpanzees may reveal how humans started to boogie

Dancing chimpanzees may reveal how humans started to boogie

4 years ago
Anonymous $9ruWwTnhZq

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/12/dancing-chimpanzees-may-reveal-how-humans-started-boogie

One day in 2014, primatologist Yuko Hattori was trying to teach a mother chimpanzee in her lab to keep a beat. Hattori would play a repetitive piano note, and the chimp would attempt to tap out the rhythm on a small electronic keyboard in hopes of receiving a tasty piece of apple.

Everything went as expected in the experiment room, but in the next room over, something strange was happening. Another chimpanzee, the mother’s son, heard the beat and began to sway his body back and forth, almost as if he were dancing. “I was shocked,” Hattori says. “I was not aware that without any training or reward, a chimpanzee would spontaneously engage with the sound.”