There is increased research interest in the temporal dynamics of real-time behavior, a pathway that offers enriched opportunities to study fundamental determinants of animal communication systems. Because temporal processing is the underlying component of many neuronal networks in animal brains, there is strong support that many characteristics encompassing communicative behaviors are in some way influenced by time. For instance, synchronization between human brains has been observed in a variety of communicative situations, and synchronization of brain rhythms to acoustic and/or visual stimuli has been observed in both the macaque brain and the human brain. Evidence continues to mount that in humans, temporal processing underlies most, if not all, auditory processing abilities with specific importance to multi-timescale, quasi-rhythmic properties of speech and musical communication. Thus, the fundamental and ubiquitous role that temporal dynamics serve for humans is driving increased pursuits in this research with non-human animals, and particularly other primates. These new studies hold increasing promise for understanding the evolutionary trajectories of perception and cognition of temporal dynamics, for non-verbal/first-order languaging behaviors, for biological anthropology, and for research focused on the underlying structures of animal communication systems.