- A captive chimpanzee in Japan spontaneously ripped floorboards from a walkway and used them as instruments to perform structured, rhythmic drumming displays while vocalizing
- Researchers recorded 89 performances and found the drumming wasn’t random and followed a structured, rhythmic pattern similar to chimpanzee vocal calls.
- The chimp displayed play faces and what appeared to be laughter while drumming, suggesting the behavior was emotionally rewarding, not just a social display.
- The findings support the hypothesis that instrumental music may have evolved from vocal emotional expression, though the study is limited to a single individual in a captive setting.
Drumming and singing at the same time is impressive, whether you’re Karen Carpenter, Ringo Starr or a chimpanzee. Japanese researchers report that Ayumu, a 26-year-old male chimpanzee and alpha of his group at Kyoto University’s Institute for the Evolutionary Origins of Human Behavior (EHUB), has been spontaneously tearing floorboards from a walkway, fashioning them into instruments and performing extended drumming displays while vocalizing.
“I was surprised,” primatologist Yuko Hattori told Mongabay. “Chimpanzee drumming-like behavior has been reported before, for example when they throw stones or hit old tree trunks. However, behavior like this — using a stick in a way that closely resembled playing a drum — has not been reported before.”
Over two years beginning in February 2023, Hattori and her team recorded 89 of Ayumu’s spontaneous performances across 37 days. Their study, published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, found that Ayumu’s drumming was rhythmically structured, not random, and bore a striking resemblance to the vocal calls chimpanzees use to communicate across long distances.
Wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) are known to drum on the buttress roots of trees, producing low-frequency booms that can be heard more than a kilometer away. A 2025 study in Current Biology analyzed more than 370 drumming bouts across 11 wild chimpanzee communities and found that this percussion is rhythmic and varies by subspecies. Western chimpanzees drum with evenly spaced beats, while eastern chimpanzees alternate between shorter and longer intervals.
Ayumu didn’t just drum, he pried loose floorboards from his enclosure’s walkway to use as instruments, an act researchers classify as “detachment,” a hallmark of early-stage tool-making. His performances incorporated up to 14 distinct components, including tool-assisted drumming, object dragging and object throwing, strung together into sequences lasting several minutes.
Ayumu drumming while expressing his “play” face at at Kyoto University’s Institute for the Evolutionary Origins of Human Behavior (EHUB). Photo courtesy of Yuko Hattori
When the team statistically analyzed the order in which Ayumu combined these actions, they found the transitions were not random. Drumming tended to lead to dragging, which often led to throwing, a progression from slower, louder sounds to a final climactic gesture. The pattern closely mirrors the structure of pant-hoot vocalizations,