Perhaps most striking is the two-handed bongo-style drumming observed in gorillas and bonobos. Jane Goodall determined that chimpanzees also drum. The primatologist found that dominant chimp males usually perform such drumming "solos" while emitting vocal "pant-hoot" sounds.
In an upcoming Journal of Music Perception study, Bispham indicates that drumming in non-human primates has been correlated with resting periods, along with possibly communicating future group foraging destinations. The primate drumming is "both individually and culturally distinct," he believes.
It’s then possible, he says, that early tribal drumming by humans could have evolved from the percussive skills of our distant ape ancestors.
The Music-Language Link
Just as new findings are challenging the notion that music appreciation is an exclusive trait of humans, the idea that language is primarily a human skill has also been under fire. And many scientists see the two as being closely related.
In whales, for example, research has found an intricate relationship between music and language. The songs of humpback whales were recently determined to contain striking elements of human language.
Ryuji Suzuki, of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and colleagues found that both humans and whales communicate by using discrete sound units that are arranged within a hierarchical structure.
While humans arrange such structures in their language, whales communicate them through songs.
University of St. Andrews psychologist W. Tecumseh Fitch agrees there is an overlap between the basic design of music— including animal songs—and language, but he thinks it is more structural, and less semantic, in nature.
In a study published earlier this year in Cognition, Fitch pointed out that human vocalizations may have developed according to acoustic and emotional foundations that are shared with other primates and mammals.
Still, he says, we humans evolved along our own, unique evolutionary course that heightened our instrumental and singing skills, as well as our appreciation of music.
McDermott agrees, adding that something must have happened in the course of evolution to make us such music lovers.
"The fact that (this level of appreciation) is unique to humans is consistent with the idea that music served some important function that drove its evolution," he said.
