A study by scientists from Northwestern University in the US has found that communication signals across the animal kingdom, from bird mating dances to frog songs to human music to firefly flashes, all of which seem to time their signals to the same basic beat. The researchers found that the tempo of these signals clusters around 2 beats per second, suggesting that this could explain the origin of communication. The study was conducted in Thailand by mathematician Guy Amichay and his colleagues, who found that while studying how animals use synchrony in communication, each species had similar tempos. They used a computer model of a neural circuit to simulate these patterns and found that getting the right signal in the right tempo is a key to communicating efficiently. However, there are limitations to the study as the planet contains millions of animal species and there are limited limitations on the study.