National Geographic caught up with Patel at AAAS to talk about the perception of rhythm and music in people and in animals. How long have people have been looking at the ability of other animals to follow a beat? In biology, theres been a long interest in synchrony among certain species. Its well known for example that there are certain fireflies that will flash synchronously. And this has been studied since the 70s. But in terms of animals sensitivity to musical beats and being able to synchronize to an auditory beat in the way that we do, which is very flexible—being able to slow down and speed up and extracting that beat from music—thats very recent.
Posted on: Fri, 21 Feb 2014 08:03:41 +0000