Not to be outdone by Ronan the beat-keeping sea lion or woodpeckers in the forest, some chimpanzees are also able to keep a beat and use regular spacing between drum hits. “Based on our previous work, we expected that western chimpanzees would use more hits and drums more quickly than eastern chimpanzees,” Vesta Eleuteri, a study co-author and cognitive biologist at the University of Vienna in Austria, said in a statement. A 2022 study from the same research team showed that chimpanzees can drum on the buttress roots of trees. They analyzed the drum patterns and found that chimpanzees can drum with rhythm. Western chimpanzees used evenly spaced hits and hit their “drums” more, using a faster tempo, and integrated the drumming into their pant-hoot vocalizations earlier.