Part 1: What is \u201csinging\u201d in the animal world? How do we define singing?<\/strong>
\nFirst up: how do scientists define singing in the animal world?<\/p>\nThe sounds indris make can be broken into two categories: call and song.<\/p>\n
This is a call.<\/p>\n
[Chiara]:
\n\u201cCalls are usually less complex than songs and are most often composed of a single sound. They lack complex and melodical organization.\u201d<\/p>\n
Calls are used as alarm signals to warn against predators,<\/p>\n
and as a way of \u201cgetting attention\u201d from others before singing in a group.<\/p>\n
And this is a song.<\/p>\n
[Chiara]:
\n\u201cSongs are longer, more complex, and are composed of different kinds of notes following an order.\u201d<\/p>\n
Simply put, indri songs display common musical components that exist in human music.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s a human \u2013<\/p>\n
[Jean]: Hi, I\u2019m Jean.<\/p>\n
\u2026demonstrating musical components that appear in indri songs like:<\/p>\n
[Chiara]: Pitch, Melody, Tempo<\/p>\n
And most crucially, Rhythm.<\/p>\n
Also defined as the placement of sounds in time.<\/p>\n
It is the one indispensable element of all music.<\/p>\n
Chiara\u2019s recent study discovered two examples of human-like rhythm in indri songs:<\/p>\n
A 1:1 rhythm, where<\/p>\n
[Chiara]: \u201cIntervals have the same duration, like the sound of a metronome.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kinda like this song.<\/p>\n
And a 1:2 rhythm, where the second interval is twice as long as the first.<\/p>\n
Listen to this recording of an indri.<\/p>\n
The combination of regular intervals between notes gives this song the same rhythm as Queen\u2019s famous song.<\/p>\n
Listening to a piece of music is a super complicated endeavor \u2013 your brain processes a complex array of sounds, extracts information from it, and predicts what happens next.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s pretty amazing that our cousins have the same ability.<\/p>\n
\nPart 2: Why do they sing?<\/strong>
\nSo why do indris sing?<\/p>\n[Chiara]:
\n\u201cThere are different types of songs that we have investigated \u2013 three types.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n- Advertisement songs, given each morning when the family groups wake up.<\/li>\n
- Cohesion songs, a way for the animals to find each other and reunite in the forest.<\/li>\n
- Territorial songs, given when two family groups are in visual contact and start this kind of vocal battle.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
But the jury\u2019s still out on why lemurs developed singing behavior in the first place.<\/p>\n
Scientists believe it\u2019s because rhythmic songs are easily distinguishable in the cacophony of the rainforest. But it\u2019s still a theory.<\/p>\n
\nPart 3: So what?<\/strong>
\nThe animal world is rich in song and rhythm.<\/p>\nBut indris are special because they are our closest living relatives.<\/p>\n
[Chiara]:
\n\u201cThis may have also played a role in the evolution of our language.\u201d<\/p>\n
This finding contributes to the ongoing discussion around the \u201cmusical protolanguage hypothesis\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014a Darwinian theory that language and music originated from a pre-linguistic stage that was more like music than speech.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s still unclear whether indri song was a precursor to human song,<\/p>\n
or if our rhythmic abilities evolved independently.<\/p>\n
But this work is the starting point to figuring out more.<\/p>\n
There are fewer than 10,000 indris left in the wild, and they\u2019re constantly threatened by habitat loss from deforestation and pollution.<\/p>\n
Hopefully, our shared traits\u2026<\/p>\n
\u2026can remind us that we are animals ourselves, living in a world that is crucial to preserve.<\/p>\n
Much like the origin of language, the origin of music has been a topic of great speculation and debate for centuries.<\/p>\n
Charles Darwin thought that \u201csome early progenitor of man\u201d started singing crudely, \u201cas do some of the gibbon-apes at the present day,\u201d \u201cduring the courtship of the sexes.\u201d In other words, Darwin thought songs and musical expressions appeared and then proliferated because our ancestors noticed music could get them laid.<\/p>\n
Others suggest that music is merely an adaptation from an ancestral trait, such as territorial calls and signals.<\/p>\n
A new study adds weight to this line of thinking. Researchers at the University of Warwick, the University of Torino, and the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics found that Madagascan lemurs\u2014small black-and-white primates\u2014make rhythmic \u201chonks\u201d during their alarm calls. It sounds a bit like a car horn.<\/p>\n
But to understand the rest of the story, first we need a music lesson.<\/p>\n
\nWhat are the elements of a song or music?<\/p>\n
This is a beat \u2013 the steady pulse of a piece of music that remains constant throughout.<\/p>\n
Rhythm is made up of changing patterns of long and short sounds, as well as silences. In human music, it\u2019s laid on top of the beat.<\/p>\n
This is a rhythm.<\/p>\n
A rhythm, when made up of notes with pitch, becomes a melody.<\/p>\n
Indri songs have been known to contain notes organized in phrases.<\/p>\n
[first study]<\/p>\n
But scientists have recently proven that their songs contain rhythm too \u2013 specifically \u201ccategorical rhythms.\u201d This type of rhythm refers to intervals between sounds that have exactly the same duration (1:1 rhythm) or doubled duration (1:2 rhythm). Even when sung at different tempos, the categorical rhythm is what allows songs to be easily recognizable.<\/p>\n
The lemurs\u2019 songs matched two rhythmic categories: a 1:1 rhythm\u2014a pace akin to a metronome; and a 1:2 rhythm\u2014like the stomp-stomp-clap of Queen\u2019s \u201cWe Will Rock You.\u201d Additionally, when indris sing, they gradually decrease their tempo\u2014described in musical terms as ritardando.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\nRead More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Music MADAGASCAR \u2013 It turns out that the Indri Indri lemurs of Madagascar can carry a tune. Researchers have found that these furry, tree-dwelling creatures use music to communicate with one another, likely for generations. Through collecting songs and calls produced by 20 indri groups in Madagascar\u2019s rainforests over the span of 15 years, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":821441,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[131522],"class_list":["post-821440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business-news","tag-podcast-music"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=821440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/821441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=821440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=821440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=821440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}