Nature May Have a Universal Tempo, and It’s Close to Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance”

Crickets chirping. Flashing fireflies. “Bad Romance” by Lady Gaga. All three share one thing in common. They repeat over a narrow tempo range close to 2 hertz, which is equivalent to 2 beats per second or 120 beats per minute.

Researchers at Northwestern University discovered what they described as a tempo “hot spot.” According to the document published in Biology PLOSMany forms of animal communication – from squirrels to sparrows – seem to adhere to this favored tempo of two beats per second.

“I would have thought that a cricket and a sea lion, for example, wouldn’t have much in common,” said co-author Danny Abrams, professor of engineering sciences and applied mathematics. Discover. “But it appears that sharing the building blocks – neurons – in their nervous systems may be enough to cause both to respond strongly to signals of around 120 beats per minute.”

Universal rhythms in nature

The idea for the article originated during a trip to Thailand in 2022, when Guy Amichay, a research associate in Abrams’ lab, was participating in a project exploring synchrony in nature. The goal of this trip was to collect images of firefly swarms. However, it soon became clear that the fireflies weren’t just in sync with each other. They were in sync with the nearby crickets, which seemed to chirp in time with the firefly flashes.

Looking at the footage, it no longer seemed like the fireflies were in sync with the crickets. Instead, it appeared that both animals had adopted a rhythm of around 2.4 hertz. The question then became: is this a rhythm shared by fireflies and crickets, or by animals in general?

To find out, Amichay and Abrams combed through previously published research and a wildlife records database. The researchers specifically looked at examples of isochronous communication, a style that involves repetitive signals.

There seemed to be a theme: The animals described in the studies communicated, roughly, at a frequency of 0.5 to 4 hertz. This was the case regardless of size or habitat, and regardless of whether the communication involved sound, movement, or light.

There have been exceptions: bush crickets, for example, are known to communicate between 11 and 14 hertz, and some species of bats produce calls between 10 and 14 hertz. But many others – from sea lions and red foxes to common toads and fiddler crabs – have jumped on board the trend.

While the researchers noted the possibility of selection bias, they argued in the study: “The abundance of cases in the 0.5-4 Hz range suggests that there may be some adaptive value at this frequency band.” »

Learn more: Male fireflies flash one each May in Congaree National Park, inspiring robotics of the future

A tempo that humans also use

The preferred tempo seems to apply to human communication as well and is found in many popular songs, from Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” to Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams.”

The reason for this tempo “hot spot” may be due to our neurological wiring. Researchers suggest that our brains (and those of crickets, squirrels and sea lions) may be programmed to recognize and understand these rhythms.

Previous research studying beat synchronization in rats, published in Scientific advancesfound a preference for a tempo between 120 and 140 beats per minute and used mathematical modeling to link this preference to neural activity (as opposed to physical constraints). When Amichay and Abrams built computer models resembling simple neural circuits and measured their response at different tempos, they also found that the receiver circuits were most sensitive to signals of around 2 hertz.

If this is the case, a tempo of around 2 hertz can alert the brain, allowing the receiver to perceive the content of the communication. As a result, communication styles may have developed in response to the brain’s preference for a certain rhythm, the researchers write – a preference that may exist in all animals, since neurons are found in all animal nervous systems.

Amichay and Abrams hope the study will inspire future research that explores how and why different communication frequencies are selected and investigates the robustness of their findings on receiver circuits.

“We’re trying to understand how our world works, in this case the biological world,” Abrams said. “I see our work as really contributing to fundamental understanding, and that has intrinsic value.”

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