Real music is a lot more difficult to tap along to than a metronome, because there is much more variation, the researchers explain in their publication in Science. According to prevailing theories, this would not be feasible for animals that do not produce complex sounds themselves. Macaques do not have complex speech capabilities, but they do appear to understand some music.
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The macaques received a reward for their efforts in the form of a bowl of water or juice. In one of the experiments, with the Backstreet Boys song, they also received that reward if they tapped next to the rhythm. As long as they kept up their self-chosen rhythm consistently for a while. At that point, the two macaques surprised the researchers: the monkeys chose of their own accord to tap along to the beat, even though this was not necessary.
“We interpret our work as discovering a latent ability to detect and synchronize with a musical beat,” the scientists write. They do not want to claim that this is natural behavior, or that the musical experience of macaques is the same as that of humans. “Unlike human listeners, who can perform these tasks without training, our monkeys required intensive training and still struggled.”
The musical experience is probably not a reward in itself for macaques. According to the researchers, this is a big difference with people “who voluntarily spend thousands of hours learning to play musical instruments.”