Chimpanzees drum with regular rhythm when they beat on tree trunks, a form of ancient communication
Chimpanzees drum with regular rhythm when they beat on tree trunks, a new study shows.
Chimpanzees and humans last shared a common ancestor around 6 million years ago. Scientists suspect this ancient ancestor must have been a drummer — using beats to communicate.
'Our ability to produce rhythm — and to use it in our social worlds — that seems to be something that predates humans being human,' said study co-author Cat Hobaiter, a University of St Andrews primatologist.
Previous research has shown that chimps have their own signature drumming style. A new analysis of 371 bouts of chimpanzee drumming demonstrates that the chimps 'clearly play their instruments -- the tree trunks -- with regular rhythms,' said University of Amsterdam music cognition researcher Henkjan Honing, who was not involved in the study.
When bounding through the jungle, chimps will often grab hold of the tall buttress roots of rainforest trees. Sometimes they pound them several times to create low-frequency sounds that can be heard for a kilometer or more through the forest.
Scientists believe that the drumming is a form of long-distance communication, perhaps to alert other chimps where one chimp is waiting or the direction it is traveling.
'It's a way of socially checking in,' said Hobaiter, adding that each chimp has its own 'individual signature — a pattern of beats that allows you to recognize who's producing that drumming.'
The new work showed that chimps from different regions of Africa drum with distinctly different rhythms, with western chimps preferring a more even beat while eastern chimps used varied short and long intervals between beats. The research was published Friday in the journal Current Biology.
It's well-known that chimps use tools such as rocks to crack open nuts and sticks to 'fish' termites from their mounds. Tree roots can also be tools, the researchers say.
Chimps are selective about which roots they pound, said co-author Catherine Crockford, a primatologist at the CNRS Institute for Cognitive Sciences in France. Certain shapes and wood varieties create sounds that travel well through dense jungle.
The drummings are likely 'a very important way to make contact,' she said.
___
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Gizmodo
21 hours ago
- Gizmodo
What Whale Bubbles Can Teach Us About Alien Communication
A new study analyzes 12 events in which whales may have tried to communicate with humans. Researchers have decided that a potentially good way to prepare for future contact with extraterrestrial beings is by studying…whale bubbles. No, it's not a joke—researchers from the SETI Institute, the University of California, Davis (UC Davis), and several partner institutions recently published a paper describing humpback whales blowing bubble rings during friendly interactions with humans. While this might not seem like a shocking action, the behavior provides insight into non-human intelligence, with important implications for our ongoing search for alien life. 'Because of current limitations on technology, an important assumption of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence is that extraterrestrial intelligence and life will be interested in making contact and so target human receivers,' Laurance Doyle, SETI Institute scientist and co-author of the study published last month in the journal Marine Mammal Science, said in an institute statement. 'This important assumption is certainly supported by the independent evolution of curious behavior in humpback whales.' While researchers had previously documented humpback whales creating bubble nets to capture prey and using bubbles to vie for female whales, the study examines the cetaceans blowing bubble rings during amicable interactions with humans. Doyle and his colleagues studied 12 bubble ring events involving 11 whales and 39 rings, behaviors that may represent playfulness or an attempt at communication. Jodi Frediani, a co-lead author of the study and marine wildlife photographer affiliated with UC Davis, explained that humpback whales frequently interact with boats and even swimmers in a curious, friendly way. 'Humpback whales live in complex societies, are acoustically diverse, use bubble tools and assist other species being harassed by predators,' added Fred Sharpe, also a co-lead author of the study from UC Davis. 'Now, akin to a candidate signal [from extraterrestrial life], we show they are blowing bubble rings in our direction in an apparent attempt to playfully interact, observe our response, and/or engage in some form of communication.' Chances are that, should we ever establish contact with extraterrestrials, their form of communication won't be what we expect. By analyzing intelligent nonhuman communication systems—such as whales blowing bubbles while engaging with boats and people—scientists can broaden their understanding of unfamiliar forms of communication and refine what we should look for in our search for life beyond Earth. The goal is to be better prepared if or when contact occurs. Simply put, whale bubbles can be an analog for an alien language. Their approach is the latest in a host of efforts to simulate extraterrestrial scenarios and hypothesize how we might ultimately come into contact with an alien species.
Fast Company
a day ago
- Fast Company
This new ultra-sweet protein can replace 90% of sugar in sweet foods
The oubli is an ultra-sweet tropical fruit from West Africa—but it's not full of sugar. Instead, it contains a type of sweet protein called brazzein. Recognizing the potential of sweet proteins to replace sugar, California-based food-tech company Oobli is using precision fermentation to make them at scale. 'Because they evolved along with us to trick us into thinking they were sugar, they hit our sweet taste receptors in a very similar way,' says Jason Ryder, Oobli's founder and chief technology officer. 'But after that, they digest just like other proteins do.' The proteins don't affect blood sugar, so they can avoid the health issues of sugar and sugar alternatives, such as heart attack and stroke. Oobli's fermentation-based approach avoids the difficulty of harvesting the fruit in its native tropical environment. For every 1% reduction in sugar production, the company estimates that it can save 525,000 acres of land, 88 billion gallons of water, and a million metric tons of CO2 emissions. In 2024, when the FDA reviewed the safety data for two of Oobli's proteins and raised no objections, other food-ingredient companies, such as Ingredion, ramped up their R&D with Oobli. The sweet proteins can replace up to 90% of sugar in most sweet food and drinks, and since the proteins can be as much as 5,000 times sweeter than sugar, only a tiny amount is needed. That helps the proteins compete on cost with sugar, which is cheap to produce. In products like baked goods, Oobli's alternatives leave room in recipes for other nutrients, such as extra fiber. They can also be used to reduce the aftertaste of sugar alternatives. The company now makes its own line of chocolates using the proteins. Multiple global brands, including Mexico-based Grupo Bimbo, the world's largest baked goods company, are preparing to launch products with the ingredients soon.
Medscape
2 days ago
- Medscape
Study Reveals Malaria Parasite's Secrets
Malaria parasites can hide in people's bodies for years or even decades without causing symptoms by shutting down the genes that make them visible to the immune system, a new report found. This discovery explains how people can remain infected years after developing malaria and spread the disease through mosquitos that bite them, said Kirk W. Deitsch, PhD, professor with the Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Weill Medical College of Cornell University, New York City, and co-author of a study published in Nature Microbiology . 'What's probably happening in a place like Africa, where there's a lot of malaria transmission, is that people we thought didn't have malaria actually had these invisible parasites at really low levels in their system,' Deitsch told Medscape Medical News . The implications for elimination campaigns are significant. Currently, 'when we try to do a malaria elimination campaign, [we] treat the kids, the ones who are sick,' he said. The study suggests 'that we need to treat all asymptomatic people, the adults, because they're carrying these cryptic parasites that nobody knew about before.' Sticky Proteins and Spleen Avoidance The researchers sought to better understand how malaria persists in the body. 'There were these weird cases where a person who grew up in, let's say, Africa, had malaria several times, were no longer infected, and moved to the States. They lived in the States for a decade, maybe 12 or 13 years, and then they give blood for a transfusion, and the recipient of the transfusion gets really bad malaria,' Deitsch said. 'So clearly, those parasites have been hiding in this person for more than a decade, and nobody knew why. How are they hiding? Where are they?' Study authors focused on the var gene, which expresses an adhesive surface protein on the infected red blood cells in malaria. The protein is 'sticky,' allowing infected cells to attach to blood vessel walls and avoid being filtered out by the spleen, Deitsch said. But the parasite pays a price because the immune system can detect the sticky protein. Previous methods of analyzing the genetics of malaria looked at millions of parasites together. 'If you want to know which gene is being turned on in that population, you take all those parasites, you extract all the RNA from the population, and you look at which gene is turned on,' Deitsch explained. For the new study, researchers analyzed the malaria parasite at the single-cell level. 'We isolated single parasites and then looked at which gene is being expressed by just that individual parasite,' he said. 'We found there was always a group of parasites that had turned off the entire [ var ] gene family and were expressing no genes at all.' As a result, the red blood cells didn't produce the surface proteins, allowing them to be 'invisible' and evade the immune system. Like a Criminal The parasites don't turn invisible right away, Deitsch said. Instead, they constantly switch to different sticky proteins, like a criminal changing disguises, as the immune system swings into action. 'As soon as your antibody titer begins to rise, they just switch to a different adhesive protein.' 'The parasite only has so many copies of this adhesive protein that they can put out to the surface over their lifetime. So they run out of genes after about a year and a half or so.' Scientists used to think this meant the infection would be cleared. 'Everybody always assumed that once the parasite runs out of these genes, that the infection is over. You clear the infection, and then you're okay.' Deitsch used the metaphor of a criminal who has a closet full of 50-60 disguises. 'When you get to the last one, then you've run out, and the cops have figured out all your previous disguises. At the back of the closet, there's an invisibility cloak. They can put that on, and then the cops can't see you at all.' These invisible parasites exist at very low levels. 'Those parasites don't go to very high levels because your spleen is continuously filtering them,' Deitsch explained. 'But what they're able to do is maintain this low level of infection for a long time.' The only sign of continued infection may be a slightly enlarged spleen 'because the spleen is continuously clearing a lot of these invisible parasites by filtration,' Deitsch noted. Changes in Malaria Prevention Strategy? The findings suggest that anti-malaria efforts should treat entire populations with anti-malaria drugs, even healthy people, Deitsch said. And drugs could be developed to make the hidden parasites become visible to the immune system. However, neither strategy is simple, he said. What's next? 'We're going to continue working on the molecular mechanisms that mediate this process [and explore] how the parasites control their chromosomes and their genes to go into this silent, invisible state and then switch back out into a different state,' Deitsch said. Researchers are also studying basic questions about how parasites coordinate their disguise changes. 'There are literally trillions of parasites in the circulation of a sick individual, and they seem to coordinate switching their disguise,' Deitsch said. 'They all know to go to the same next disguise.' Outside Experts Weigh In Karine Le Roch, PhD, MS, director of the Center for Infectious Disease and Vector Research, University of California, Riverside, who was not involved with the paper, told Medscape Medical News that it's 'a rigorous, innovative, and impactful study that advances a long-standing question in malaria biology.' The report 'addresses a major paradox in malaria biology and offers a compelling explanation for asymptomatic chronic infections, which have long been poorly understood,' she said. Anna Bachmann, PhD, a research group leader at the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg, Germany, also praised the study. Bachmann, who didn't work on the paper, said it suggests 'that P falciparum may possess even more sophisticated strategies to maintain long-term infections than previously understood.' She added that the findings have implications regarding whether migrants need more extensive screening and treatment for acute and chronic infections. 'Many parasitic infections in refugees from sub-Saharan Africa have been found to be clinically almost silent, leading to the recommendation that screening practices need to be improved, particularly with respect to parasitic infections,' she said. 'This is primarily to improve the health of migrants, but it could also become relevant in the context of a potential reintroduction of malaria in nonendemic regions as currently being observed in parts of the United States and southern Europe.' The National Institutes of Health supported Deitsch and another author via grants. Deitsch is a Stavros S. Niarchos Scholar and recipient of a William Randolph Hearst Endowed Faculty Fellowship Grant, and the William Randolph Hearst Foundation supported his institution. Another author received support from the Swiss National Science Foundation. The other authors had no disclosures.
