Researchers discovered indris from Madagascar can sing in multiple intervals, the only lemurs to be able to do so.
That’s because they’ve got rhythm. The Indri indri, a species of lemur in Madagascar, is one of a few animal species with rhythm, according to a study published Monday in Current Biology. The indri is the largest living lemur species and the only one that sings, which made it the perfect animal to study to see if it has rhythm, said study coauthor Chiara De Gregorio, a researcher in the department of life sciences and systems biology at the University of Turin in Italy. Rhythm was defined as „durational patterns that consist of sounds and silences,“ she said. The indri’s singing sounds like lower and higher howling pitches that pierce through the air. The researchers wanted to see if the black-and-white lemurs had categorical rhythm — the ability to create different types of rhythm patterns.
