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Italian Robinson Crusoe Forced to Leave Beloved Island

Sea lions bask on rocks on Robinson Crusoe Island, in the Pacific Juan Fernandez Islands, off the coast of Chile, on January 30, 2019. (AFP/Ana Fernandez)
Sea lions bask on rocks on Robinson Crusoe Island, in the Pacific Juan Fernandez Islands, off the coast of Chile, on January 30, 2019. (AFP/Ana Fernandez)
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Italian Robinson Crusoe Forced to Leave Beloved Island

Sea lions bask on rocks on Robinson Crusoe Island, in the Pacific Juan Fernandez Islands, off the coast of Chile, on January 30, 2019. (AFP/Ana Fernandez)
Sea lions bask on rocks on Robinson Crusoe Island, in the Pacific Juan Fernandez Islands, off the coast of Chile, on January 30, 2019. (AFP/Ana Fernandez)

A man known as Italy's Robinson Crusoe who has lived alone on a Mediterranean island for more than 30 years after running into difficulties in the sea, has said he is finally surrendering to pressure from authorities to leave and will be moving to a small apartment, reported The Guardian.

Mauro Morandi, 81, stumbled across Budelli, a Mediterranean island off Sardinia, in 1989, after his catamaran broke down on the way to the south Pacific. In a fortuitous twist of fate, Morandi discovered that the island's caretaker was about to retire, and so he abandoned the sailing trip, sold his boat and took over the role.

Since then, Morandi, whose home is a former Second World War shelter overlooking a bay, has got to know every rock, tree and animal species of the rugged islet.

Morandi said he had decided to leave at the end of the month after several threats of eviction from the La Maddalena national park authorities, which have been managing Budelli since 2016 and want to reclaim his home and turn the island into what has been described as a hub for environmental education.

"I have given up the fight. After 32 years here, I feel very sad to leave. They told me they need to do work on my house and this time it seems to be for real," he said.

Morandi, originally from Modena in central Italy, said he was moving into a small apartment on nearby La Maddalena, the largest island of the archipelago.

"I'll be living in the outskirts of the main town, so will just go there for shopping and the rest of the time keep myself to myself. My life won't change too much, I'll still see the sea," he said. As for Budelli, he said: "I hope that someone can protect it as well as I have."

For years, Morandi guarded the island without trouble, but his role came under threat when the private company that owned the island went bankrupt. Plans to sell it in 2013 to Michael Harte, a businessman from New Zealand who pledged to keep Morandi on as caretaker, were thwarted amid protests and an intervention by the Italian government.

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Jungle Music: Chimp Drumming Reveals Building Blocks of Human Rhythm

In this photo provided by researchers, a wild male chimpanzee produces a pant-hoot call to elicit a response from distant group members and reunite with them in the Budongo Forest of Uganda in June 2016. (Adrian Soldati via AP)
In this photo provided by researchers, a wild male chimpanzee produces a pant-hoot call to elicit a response from distant group members and reunite with them in the Budongo Forest of Uganda in June 2016. (Adrian Soldati via AP)
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Jungle Music: Chimp Drumming Reveals Building Blocks of Human Rhythm

In this photo provided by researchers, a wild male chimpanzee produces a pant-hoot call to elicit a response from distant group members and reunite with them in the Budongo Forest of Uganda in June 2016. (Adrian Soldati via AP)
In this photo provided by researchers, a wild male chimpanzee produces a pant-hoot call to elicit a response from distant group members and reunite with them in the Budongo Forest of Uganda in June 2016. (Adrian Soldati via AP)

Like humans, chimpanzees drum with distinct rhythms - and two subspecies living on opposite sides of Africa have their own signature styles, according to a study published in Current Biology.

Previous work showed chimpanzees pound the huge flared buttress roots of rainforest trees to broadcast low‑frequency booms through dense foliage.

The idea that ape drumming might hold clues to the origins of human musicality has long fascinated scientists, but collecting enough clean data amid the cacophony of the jungle had, until now, proven elusive.

“Finally we've been able to quantify that chimps drum rhythmically - they don't just randomly drum,” lead author Vesta Eleuteri of the University of Vienna told AFP.

The findings lend fresh weight to the theory that the raw ingredients of human music were present before our evolutionary split from chimpanzees six million years ago.

For the new study, Eleuteri and colleagues - including senior authors Catherine Hobaiter of the University of St Andrews in the UK and Andrea Ravignani of Sapienza University in Rome - compiled more than a century's worth of observational data.

After cutting through the noise, the team focused on 371 high-quality drumming bouts recorded from 11 chimpanzee communities across six populations living in both rainforest and savannah-woodland habitats across eastern and western Africa.

Their analysis showed that chimpanzees drum with definitive rhythmic intent - the timing of their strikes is not random.

Distinct differences also emerged between subspecies: western chimpanzees tended to produce more evenly timed beats, while eastern chimpanzees more frequently alternated between shorter and longer intervals.

Western chimps also drummed more frequently, kept a quicker tempo, and began drumming earlier in their signature chimp calls, made up of rapid pants and hoots.

The researchers do not yet know what is driving the differences - but they propose that it might signify differences in social dynamics.

The western chimps' faster, predictable pulse might promote or be evidence of greater social cohesion, the authors argue, noting that western groups are generally less aggressive toward outsiders.

By contrast, the eastern apes' variable rhythms could carry extra nuance - handy for locating or signaling companions when their parties are more widely dispersed.

Next, Hobaiter says she would like to study the data further to understand whether there are intergenerational differences between rhythms within the same groups.

“Music is not only a difference between different musical styles, but a musical style like rock or jazz, is itself going to evolve over time,” she said.

“We're actually going to have to find a way to tease apart group and intergenerational differences to get at that question of whether or not it is socially learned,” she said. “Do you have one guy that comes in with a new style and the next generation picks it up?”