You know that singing ring-tailed lemur from the movie Madagascar? King Julien swings happily. Not surprising, because it turns out that lemurs can sing very well in time!
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From a study published in the journal Current Biology turns out that lemurs create a rhythm with their sounds. But what exactly is a rhythm? You can practice that by drumming or clapping. Try clapping four times and taking an equal amount of breaks between each clapping. So it’s no longer random clap, but a rhythm!
Indri’s
The new study looked at indris, a large lemur species. The scientists recorded the sound of 39 different indris in the rainforest of the African country of Madagascar. The researchers could hear two kinds of rhythms in the sounds the animals made. In one, all the sounds in succession had the same length. In the others, some sounds were twice as long as the sound before them.
Sing along?
There are even more animals that can make rhythms. Many birds also whistle their songs in a certain rhythm. It was not yet known that monkey species can also do this and it is still unclear what the effect of this trick on the animals is. But just because they can do this doesn’t mean they can actually sing along. So probably no sound yet ‘I like to move it, move it’ from the trees in Madagascar.
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