Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory 0200, Australia.
School of Biological Sciences, University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Queensland 4072, Australia.
Sci Adv. 2017 Jun 28;3(6):e1602399. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.1602399. eCollection 2017 Jun.
All human societies have music with a rhythmic "beat," typically produced with percussive instruments such as drums. The set of capacities that allows humans to produce and perceive music appears to be deeply rooted in human biology, but an understanding of its evolutionary origins requires cross-taxa comparisons. We show that drumming by palm cockatoos () shares the key rudiments of human instrumental music, including manufacture of a sound tool, performance in a consistent context, regular beat production, repeated components, and individual styles. Over 131 drumming sequences produced by 18 males, the beats occurred at nonrandom, regular intervals, yet individual males differed significantly in the shape parameters describing the distribution of their beat patterns, indicating individual drumming styles. Autocorrelation analyses of the longest drumming sequences further showed that they were highly regular and predictable like human music. These discoveries provide a rare comparative perspective on the evolution of rhythmicity and instrumental music in our own species, and show that a preference for a regular beat can have other origins before being co-opted into group-based music and dance.
所有人类社会都有节奏“节拍”的音乐，通常使用鼓等打击乐器来演奏。人类产生和感知音乐的能力似乎深深扎根于人类生物学，但要了解其进化起源，需要进行跨物种比较。我们发现，棕榈凤头鹦鹉的击鼓行为具有人类乐器演奏的关键要素，包括制作发声工具、在一致的背景下演奏、有规律的节奏产生、重复的组成部分以及个人风格。在 18 只雄性棕榈凤头鹦鹉演奏的 131 个击鼓序列中，鼓点出现在非随机的、有规律的间隔，但描述它们击鼓模式分布的形状参数在个体雄性之间存在显著差异，这表明存在个体击鼓风格。最长击鼓序列的自相关分析进一步表明，它们像人类音乐一样具有高度的规律性和可预测性。这些发现为我们自身物种中节奏和乐器音乐的进化提供了一个罕见的比较视角，并表明，在被纳入群体音乐和舞蹈之前，对有规律的节拍的偏好可能有其他起源。
