Monkeys can tap to beat of human music after metronome training, study finds

1 December 2025, 13:50

A new study has changed thinking on the roots of beat perception.

There’s no longer a valid excuse for the oboes being a bar behind at wind band rehearsal because a new study has found that even macaque monkeys can learn to tap along to the beat of human music.

Scientists at Kyoto University trained macaques to synchronise their finger taps with a metronome, then exposed the animals to real pieces of human music.

The trained monkeys adjusted their tapping to match the tempo of the music, even when presented with unfamiliar tracks and after the withdrawal of rewards. The free-tapping test was done using an excerpt of the song ‘Everybody’ by the Back Street Boys.

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The findings, published in the journal Science in an article called, simply, Monkeys Have Rhythm, shed new light on the idea of rhythmic synchronisation, which has been considered rare among non-humans.

Macaques are not vocal learners, which indicates, say the researchers, that the roots of beat perception could run deeper in evolutionary history than previously understood.

The monkeys did not demonstrate spontaneous rhythmic movement but their performance suggests other species may also possess dormant or trainable rhythmic capabilities.​

“Unlike human listeners who performed the task without explicit training, our monkeys required extensive training and still found the task effortful,” the researchers said.

A 2022 study from Tokyo suggested that rats have capacity for rhythm and can keep time to Mozart’s music.