Chimp ‘conga line’ reveals how humans learned to dance: study
By Hannah Sparks, New York Post , December 12, 2019
Before we were dancing machines, we were primates just finding our groove.
Footage of chimpanzees walking in sync — performing what appears to be a “conga” — is informing psychological researchers about the origins of dance among humans, according to the new study published Thursday in Scientific Reports.
“Dance is an icon of human expression,” the research reads. “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.”
One minute-long video shows two chimps at the Saint Louis Zoo walking in a line and taking perfectly timed steps in tandem, while each holds what appears to be a burlap bag between her legs. They continue their march around the enclosure and, at one point, the chimp in the back even puts her arm on the waist of her friend in the lead — just like in a proper conga line.
European researchers found 23 videos of the two chimps, named Holly and Bahkahri, dancing this way between October 2011 and April 2015. They say the level of coordination between the two dancing queens is on par with musicians performing a symphony.
Scientists add that this might be the “first case of spontaneous whole-body entrainment between two ape peers,” without outside stimulus, such as to mimic human behavior or training.
“Dance requires individuals to interactively synchronize their whole-body tempo to their partner’s, with near-perfect precision,” study authors write. “This explains why no dance forms were present amongst nonhuman primates.”
The fact that the chimps were doing their jungle boogie while in captivity also hints at the conditions that brought about the expressive and disciplined human art form.
“Human proto-dance, we argue, may have been rooted in mechanisms of social cohesion among small groups that might have granted stress-releasing benefits via gait-synchrony and mutual touch,” they explain. “We discuss dance evolution as driven by ecologically, socially and/or culturally imposed ‘captivity.’ ”
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