It’s no secret that we all love music! We listen to it everywhere – in the car, at birthday parties, at concerts, and more. But did you ever consider that chimps would like listening to music too?
According to recent research from the American Psychological Assocation, chimpanzees enjoy listening to Eastern music – namely, Indian and African styles. While chimps aren’t big fans of Western music, tending to stay away from the stereos that played Western pop, classical, and blues music, they were found to tend towards the areas in which they could best hear the African and Indian music. Scientists attribute it to the difference in the types of beats: Western music tends to have more of a steady rhythm and beat, which chimps could potentially find intimidating, due to such a beat’s similarities to chimpanzee dominance. African and Indian beats, however, have a lot more variation, which chimps would find less ominous and more pleasant. The chimps reacted the same way to Japanese music, which has similar beats to Western music, backing up the scientists’ theories. Though studies in the past have focused on the specific genres of music, the conductor of the study maintains that this might have been misguided. He says that, although Western pop and Western classical may sound different to us, they have similar rhythmic and acoustic patterns, making the appeal the same to chimps. The differentiated beats in African and Indian music (which vary from extremely forceful to extremely weak in a single composition) are decidedly music to these chimps’ ears.
It seems that chimpanzees are pretty worldly animals! We can learn a lesson from these chimps by broadening our musical tastes – it’s important to learn about the world’s different art forms and how they vary from each other! Download some music from a different part of the world, and listen to it with your child on the way to school or at home during dinner. Then comment below about which style of music your family likes most!
Photo by: belgianchocolate
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