Reacción a "Two macaques can tap to the beat of music in an experimental study"

In comparative cognition, we know that intensive training can bring out abilities that do not appear spontaneously in the natural behaviour of a species. This has been seen, for example, in recent studies with crows and macaques, where animals that do not use tools in the wild learned to manipulate them with great skill after a prolonged period of training. These cases show that just because a behaviour is not observed in nature does not mean that the species completely lacks the mechanisms necessary to develop it: sometimes, all that is needed is the right context for the ability to be expressed.

For years, it was thought that the ability to move to the beat of music was almost exclusive to species with complex vocal learning, the so-called “vocal learners”, such as humans and some birds (such as the cockatoos I work with at the Goffin Lab in Vienna). However, after extensive reward-based training, macaques were able to identify and follow the rhythm of real songs. In fact, they even tended to spontaneously synchronise with the correct tempo of new songs, even though doing so was not necessary to obtain a reward. This discovery does not completely invalidate the traditional hypothesis of vocal learning, but it does suggest a more nuanced scenario: it is possible for macaques to achieve behaviour similar to that of vocal learners, although probably through alternative mechanisms and thanks to intensive reinforcement.

This interpretation fits with the so-called “four-component hypothesis” (4Cs), which proposes that synchronisation with music does not depend exclusively on vocal learning, but on the coordination of general processes such as auditory pattern detection, temporal prediction, audiomotor control and reinforced learning. Under this approach, “vocal learners” would have a system that is specially prepared and motivating for rhythmic synchronisation (which would explain their natural ease in moving to the beat), while in species such as macaques this ability can emerge if the necessary components are adequately reinforced. In other words, macaques are not “musical” by nature, but they can synchronise with the rhythm by following a different path, driven by reward. Findings such as these remind us that, in the evolution of behaviour, different paths can lead to the same result.