Monkeys have rhythm.

Synchronizing movements to music is a hallmark of human culture, but its evolutionary and neurobiological origins remain unknown. This ability requires (i) extracting a steady rhythmic pulse, or beat, out of continuous sounds; (ii) projecting this pattern forward in time; and (iii) timing motor commands to anticipate future beats. Here, we demonstrate that macaques can synchronize to a subjective beat in real music and even spontaneously do so over alternative strategies. This contradicts the influential "vocal-learning hypothesis" that musical beat synchronization is privileged to species with complex learned vocalizations. We propose an alternative view of musical beat perception and synchronization as a continuum onto which different species can be mapped based on their capacity to coordinate the general abilities listed above through association with reward. Editor's summary: Musicality and especially moving to a beat—i.e., dancing—is a fundamental human trait. Very few other species have been found to do this, and all of these species are vocal learners, leading to the conclusion that such a tendency is reserved for species with this ability. Notably, most nonhuman primates are not vocal learners, leading to an evolutionary conundrum with regard to when our own ancestors may have begun to dance. Rajendran et al. now show that macaques are capable of synchronizing taps to a real musical beat and choose to do so spontaneously (see the Perspective by Ghazanfar and Steingo). —Sacha Vignieri [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]