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

Chirping crickets. Flashing fireflies. Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance.” All three share one thing in common. They repeat at a narrow tempo range that’s near 2 hertz, which is equivalent to 2 beats per second or 120 beats per minute.

Researchers at Northwestern University have found what they have described as a tempo “hotspot.” According to the paper, published in PLOS Biology, many forms of animal communication — from squirrels to sparrows — appear to adhere to this favored two-beats-per-second tempo.

“I would have thought that a cricket and a sea lion, for example, would have little in common,” co-author Danny Abrams, a professor of engineering sciences and applied mathematics, told Discover. “But it appears that sharing the basic building blocks — neurons — in their nervous systems may be enough to cause both to respond strongly to signals around 120 beats per minute.”

Universal Rhythms in Nature

The idea for the paper began with a trip to Thailand in 2022, when Guy Amichay, a research associate in Abrams’ laboratory, was on a project exploring synchrony in nature. The purpose of this trip was to collect footage of firefly swarms. However, it soon became clear that the fireflies were not only in sync with one another. They were in sync with nearby crickets, who appeared to chirp in time with the firefly flashes.

Looking back at the footage, it no longer appeared that the fireflies were in sync with the crickets. Instead, it appeared that both animals had adopted a beat of approximately 2.4 hertz. The question then became: Is this a beat shared by fireflies and crickets, or by animals more generally?

To find out, Amichay and Abrams sifted through previously published research and a wildlife recording database. The researchers specifically considered examples of isochronous communication — a style that involves repetitive signals.

There appeared to be a theme: the animals described in the studies communicated, by and large, at a rate 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 were exceptions — bush crickets, for example, are known to communicate at 11 to 14 hertz, and some species of bat produce calls at 10 to 14 hertz. But many others — from sea lions and red foxes to the common toad and fiddler crabs — adhered to the trend.

While the researchers noted the possibility of selection bias, they argued in the study, “The abundance of cases within the 0.5–4 Hz range suggests that there could be some adaptive value to this frequency band.”

Read More: Male Fireflies Flash as One Every May in Congaree National Park, Inspiring Future Robotics

A Tempo Humans Use, Too

The preferred tempo appears to apply to human communication, too, and is notable in many popular songs, from Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” to Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams.”

The reason for this tempo “hotspot” may come down to our neurological wiring. The researchers suggest 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 Science Advances, found a preference for tempo between 120 and 140 beats per minute, and used mathematical modeling to link the preference to neural activity (as opposed to physical constraints). When Amichay and Abrams built computer models resembling simple neural circuits and measured their response to different tempos, they too found the receiver circuits were most responsive to signals of around 2 hertz.

If this is the case, a tempo of around 2 hertz may alert the brain, enabling the content of the communication to be perceived by the receiver. As a result, communication styles may have developed in response to the brain’s preference for a certain tempo, 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 inspires future research that explores how and why different communication frequencies are selected and investigates how robust their receiver circuit findings are.

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

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