Humans Learnt Dance from the Chimpanzee

Humans may have learnt to dance from Chimpanzees according to researchers of University of Warwick, Durham University and Free University of Brussels. They found two chimpanzees which performed a duo dance-like behaviour, similar to a conga-line in a US zoo. The levels of motoric co-ordination, synchrony and rhythm between the two female chimpanzees matched the levels shown by orchestra players performing the same musical piece.Dr Adriano Lameira, from the Department of Psychology at the University of Warwick comments:“Dance is an icon of human expression. Despite astounding diversity around the world’s cultures and dazzling abundance of reminiscent animal systems, the evolution of dance in the human clade remains obscure.“Dance requires individuals to interactively synchronize their whole-body tempo to their partner’s, with near-perfect precision, this explains why no dance forms were present amongst nonhuman primates. Critically, this is evidence for conjoined full-body rhythmic entrainment in great apes that could help reconstruct possible proto-stages of human dance is still lacking.”