A reader calls my attention to Real Clear Science:
A Chimpanzee Has Rattled Off a Drum Solo
By Ross PomeroyBarney was a fairly normal chimpanzee. A 24-year-old, low-ranking member of a group of five adult male chimpanzees raised at the Biomedical Primate Research Centre in the Netherlands, he generally showed stereotypical behaviors: he played, he banged bottles, he climbed trees. Then, one January day, he walked away from his group and sat down outside, placing an upturned bucket between his feet. He then rattled off the only-known spontaneous, unsolicited chimpanzee drum solo. Primatologists at the center were taken completely by surprise. With no camera nearby, they recorded the five-minute performance with a simple voice recorder.
One of the findings of psychometrics among humans is that almost all cognitive skills are positively correlated. One big exception to the the g Factor model, however, is that a sense of rhythm appears to be uncorrelated with IQ. And that’s why there are so many Drummer Jokes (these are Dave Grohl’s favorites).
