Chimps Love Indian And African Music

If you are ever in a record store and you come across a group of chimpanzees you may well find them huddles around the Classical Indian section according to a study which tested the musical taste of mankind’s cousin.

The study found that whilst chimpanzees preferred to avoid the strong beats that are associated with western music they did like Akan tunes from West Africa and Indian ragas.

The study co author Frans de Wall of Emory University said the objective was not to find a preference for different cultures’ music however the researchers used music from Japan India and Africa to see the response of primates to specific acoustic characteristics.

Mr. De Waal and his associates said that previous study’s only tested the reaction of chimpanzees to specifically Western music. However music from other cultures may have fundamentally different properties. For example a typical western song may have one strong beat for every three weak beats. In contrast an Indian raga might have 1 strong beat for as many as 31 weak beats in a long rhythmic cycle.

In past studies, where the focus was Western music, researchers found that the primates preferred silence to any sort of music. For the current study researchers turned to other sorts of music to see if the same trait persisted.

For 12 consecutive mornings, the researches played 40 minutes of music in the outdoor enclosure of a group of adult chimpanzees. They found that the chimps gravitated to areas where it was possible to listen to the African and Indian music the best. However when researchers played Japanese or Western music with a strong beat, the chimps would flee.

“Chimpanzees may perceive the strong, predictable rhythmic patterns as threatening, as chimpanzee dominance displays commonly incorporate repeated rhythmic sounds such as stomping, clapping and banging objects,” Mr. de Waal said.