Humans love a good drum beat when we’re in the mood to dance, but we’re not the only species that does drum. Do other species have their own rhythm, though? New research shows they do.

A study recently published in the journal Current Biology investigated the drumming done by wild chimpanzees across different areas in Africa to determine whether their drumming has its own structure and if it differs based on region, as ours does. This builds on prior research that showed chimpanzees have their own drumming style that sends messages to members of their group.

To conduct this study, the researchers looked at drumming data from 11 different communities in six populations across eastern and western Africa. They found that each chimpanzee has its own non-random rhythm, which contains elements of human rhythm, suggesting the beginnings of humans’ rhythmic percussion may have come from the last common ancestor we shared.

Catherine Hobaiter, co-lead researcher and professor in the School of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of St Andrews, says, “Making music is a fundamental part of what it means to be human—but we don’t know for how long we have been making music. Showing that chimpanzees share some of the fundamental properties of human musical rhythm in their drumming is an exciting step in understanding when and how we evolved this skill. Our findings suggest that our ability to drum rhythmically may have existed long before we were human.”

The team also found that as chimpanzees drum away with their hands and feet on tree buttress roots, the sounds differ based on where they live. Eastern and western groups have their own beats.

Vesta Eleuteri, PhD student and member of the research team, explains, “While chimpanzees from west Africa­—like humans—often drum isochronously, which is when sounds occur one after another with the exact same amount of time between them: like the ticking of a clock, or the kick drum in electronic music. Chimpanzees from east Africa prefer to alternate short and long intervals in their drumming.”

Going forward, the team hopes to learn about the coordination involved in chimpanzees’ drumming, how their rhythm impacts social behavior, and how they choose trees that will make the sounds they’re looking for.