Lemurs in the wild serenade each other with a distinct rhythm, study finds – suggesting the ability to sing evolved early in primates

They famously sang ‘I like to move it, move it’ in the hit film Madagascar.

Now, it turns out rhythmic lemurs might actually shed light on our own love of music.

Analysis of groups of singing lemurs may reveal how humans evolved to create tunes, according to a new study.

Indris, known as ‘singing lemurs’, live in small family groups in the Madagascan rainforest and communicate using songs – similar to birds and humans.

They also use rhythmic vocalisations such as alarm calls to alert family members of predators.

King Julian might have made lemur’s famous for their love of dancing in the Dreamworks produced Madagascar films (pictured), but these Madagascan lemurs prefer singing to dancing 

Researchers from the University of Warwick found that Indris have ‘isochrony’ in their communication – where the time between sounds or notes are equal, resulting in a consistent rhythm or beat, much like in music.

For example, in an isochronous pattern, each note or beat would be evenly spaced apart, like the ticking of a clock.

For the study, the team recorded both Indris’ songs and alarm calls across various forest patches in Madagascar, following the free-ranging animals from 2005 to 2020.

Lead author Dr Chiara De Gregorio said: ‘By isolating the notes and intervals between notes in 820 songs from 51 lemurs, we calculated the rhythmic ratios for each pair of consecutive intervals.’

Analysis revealed that isochrony is present in all the songs and alarm calls, establishing it as a fundamental aspect of indri communication.

Researchers found that the calls of Indris featured consistently spaced notes in rhythms much like music 

This suggests that elements of human musical abilities could have evolved very early on in our primate lineage, as far back as new world monkeys like lemurs 

‘This discovery positions indris as animals with the highest number of vocal rhythms shared with the human musical repertoire – surpassing songbirds and other mammals,’ Dr De Gregorio added.

These results suggest that elements of human musical attributes evolved early in the primate lineage, the team said.

Given that alarm calls probably existed before more complex vocalisations like songs, isochrony might be an ancestral rhythm from which other rhythmic patterns evolved.

Co-author Dr Daria Valente, from the University of Turin, said: ‘The findings highlight the evolutionary roots of musical rhythm, demonstrating that the foundational elements of human music can be traced back to early primate communication systems.’

The findings were published in Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.