Published on 11 Jun 2026

Many animal species communicate using acoustic signals — calls, songs or vocalisations — that vary in frequency and tone. “But what about rhythm? Is there a common tempo, or does it adapt to the characteristics of each species? This temporal dimension is what we wanted to examine,” says Anne-Lise Giraud, director of the reConnect Institute, researcher at the Pasteur Institute and adjunct professor in the Department of Basic Neurosciences at the UNIGE Faculty of Medicine and Director of the reConnect Institute at the Institut Pasteur, who led the research.

The scientists analysed sounds produced by 98 species — mammals, birds, amphibians, insects, reptiles and fish — by developing a method to calculate vocalisation rate in a uniform way and assess which parameters might influence it. “We found that 95% of species fall between 0.45 and 4.99 vocalisations per second, with a marked concentration around 2.8 Hz — a striking degree of homogeneity for animals that are otherwise so different,” says Théophane Piette, postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Basic Neurosciences at the UNIGE Faculty of Medicine and first author of the study. “Neither body weight, lung capacity, social complexity nor habitat proved to be determining factors. This suggests that this rhythm is shaped by a shared, ancient constraint common across species, rather than by recent adaptations.”

Humans are no exception to this universal pattern in the animal kingdom.

A neural explanation

To analyse a sound, the brain must simultaneously integrate its overall structure and its fine details. The researchers therefore propose that auditory systems evolved around two complementary timescales. Slow oscillations, particularly in the delta band (1–4 Hz), would provide a long integration window for tracking acoustic sequences and identifying the general structure of sounds — a rate that also corresponds to that observed across many animal vocalisations. Conversely, faster processes, likely in the low gamma bands, would enable fine-grained temporal discrimination and the analysis of detailed acoustic structure. These faster mechanisms would contribute in particular to the identification of individual speakers or sound sources.

Towards cross-species communication?

Humans are no exception to this universal pattern in the animal kingdom. Although our speech rate is slightly above the animal average — partly owing to the structuring of language into syllables, words and sentences — we spontaneously slow down in challenging communication situations: background noise, an elderly interlocutor, or a young child.

This shared rhythm may have another consequence: facilitating communication between species. If most animals transmit and receive at the same basic rate, they may be able to decode signals produced by other species. That’s exactly what dogs do with their owners: they process human speech at this same slow rhythm, and humans in turn tend to slow their speech when addressing them. “This common tempo may not merely reflect how brains process sound; it could also constitute a kind of universal synchronisation that facilitates communication across species,” concludes Théophane Piette.

This study is part of the work of the NCCR Evolving Language, co-directed by the universities of Geneva, Zurich and Neuchâtel, which aims to understand the biological foundations of language, its evolutionary origins and the challenges posed by new technologies.

About the reConnect Institute

Created in April 2024, the reConnect Institute federates key players in hearing health and speech and cognitive disorders to improve their detection and management. A center of excellence in this field, it aims to complement compensatory medicine with restorative medicine over the next decade, thanks to scientific discoveries made over the last twenty years in the fields of genetics and neurosciences. reConnect is a foundation hosted by the Institut Pasteur, supported by the Hearing Institute, a center of the Institut Pasteur with the Fondation Pour l’Audition, AP-HP, university of Paris Cité, and Inserm, founding members of the Institute.

About the Institut Pasteur 

A non-profit foundation established in 1887 by Louis Pasteur, the Institut Pasteur is a world-class biomedical research center dedicated to studying and combating disease, particularly infectious diseases. From the invention of the rabies vaccine to the identification of HIV and the discovery of messenger RNA, some of the most significant breakthroughs in modern biomedical science were achieved here. The excellence of Pasteur’s research has been recognized with 10 Nobel Prizes in physiology or medicine.

The Institut Pasteur employs more than 3,100 stab members representing nearly 100 nationalities, including 1,700 scientists and engineers. Its Paris campus hosts hundreds
of researchers from other organizations, notably Inserm and the CNRS, and it collaborates with numerous leading international research institutions, including EMBL, the University of Oxford, the Francis Crick Institute, Rockefeller University and UCSF. A member of a network of more than 30 institutes across five continents- the Pasteur Network- and host to nearly ten WHO Collaborating Centres, the Institut Pasteur works on the ground alongside communities to advance public health worldwide. https://www.pasteur.fr/fr/presse 

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