An interesting interview from Discover, about how nearly every species except humans can’t learn to bop to the beat of music. As the researcher explains, this probably has to do with our vocal learning pathways, which have to be highly attuned to subtle sound rhythms.
“One theory is that music promoted group bonding when people danced together, and that in turn promoted the survival of groups. The counterargument is that maybe our sense of musical rhythm is just a by-product of another cognitive function that gave us an advantage. But what other function could that be? In 2006 I wrote a paper suggesting that rhythm could be a by-product (pdf) of another function that requires us to tightly integrate sound and movement: vocal learning, or the ability to mimic sounds made by other individuals. That led to the hypothesis that you need a vocal-learning brain to be able to move to a beat. The implication is that dogs and cats can never do it, horses and chimps can never do it, but maybe other vocal-learning species can do it.”
The only other species (class, technically) that can learn to move in rhythm to music turns out to be birds, which also learn and communicate through complex sounds.