A new study places human beings in rare neurological company — or rather, in a company of one. Researchers have found that the capacity to perceive and internally track a musical beat, that felt pulse at the heart of rhythm, appears to be a distinctly human endowment, not shared by other animals in the same way. This discovery invites us to reconsider music not as an ornament of human intelligence but as one of its foundations, woven into the very architecture of how our brains anticipate, synchronize, and make meaning from time.