Rhythm in music is about timing — when notes start and stop. And now scientists say they've found a curious pattern that's common to musical rhythm. It's a pattern also found in nature.

Music, rhythm, rise time perception and developmental dyslexia: Perception of musical meter predicts reading and phonology. Cortex, Volume 47, Issue 6 (June 2011) DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2010.07.010 ...

They found that the indri used two distinct rhythm categories: 1:1, where the notes are evenly spaced like a metronome, and 1:2, where the gap between one note is twice as long as the previous one.

Grade school kids who learned about fractions through a rhythm-and-music-based curriculum outperformed their peers in traditional math classes. The work is in Educational Studies in Mathematics.