By Christina Larson, Associated Press
Ronan The Sea Lion can still continue to beat after all these years.
It can groover in rock and electronics. But the talent of the 15 -year -old California sea lion shines the most by swinging towards disco tubes like “Boogie Wonderland”.
“She closes just this one,” swinging her head in time for tempo changes, said Peter Cook, a behavioral neuroscientist from the New College of Florida who spent a decade studying Ronan’s rhythmic capacities.
Few animals show a clear capacity to identify and move to a beat apart from humans, parrots and certain primates. But there is then Ronan, a sea lion with shiny eyes that has scientists rethink the sense of music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kufrsm8ntzg
A former rescue sea, it burst into it about ten years ago after scientists reported its musical skills. From 3 years old, she was a resident at the University of California, the long Marine Laboratory of Santa Cruz, where researchers, including Cook, tested and perfected her ability to recognize rhythms.
Ronan joined a selected group of movies and animal shakers – which also includes the snowball the famous cockato -cacato -dansant – which has turned the long -time idea that the ability to respond to music and recognize a rhythm was distinctly human.
What is particularly notable about Ronan is that she can learn to dance on a beat without learning to sing or speak musically.
“Scientists formerly believed that only animals that were vocal learners – like humans and parrots – could learn to find a beat,” said Hugo Merchant, researcher at the Mexico Neurobiology Institute, who was not involved in Ronan research.
But in the years since Ronan fell under the spotlight, questions emerged to find out if she still had it. Was his dancing past a stroke of luck? Was Ronan better than people to keep a beat?
To meet the challenge, Cook and his colleagues have designed a new study, published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports.
The result: Ronan always has it. She is back and she is better than ever.
This time, the researchers concentrated not on studio music but on percussion rhythms in a laboratory. They filmed Ronan who swung his head while the drummer played three different tempos – 112, 120 and 128 beats per minute. Two of these beats in Ronan had never been exposed, allowing scientists to test its flexibility by recognizing the new rhythms.
And the researchers asked 10 students to do the same, waving their forearms to change their beat.
Ronan was the upper diva.
“No human was better than Ronan in all the different ways we test the quality of the rhythm,” said Cook, adding that “she is much better than when she was a child”, indicating lifelong learning.
The new study confirms Ronan’s place as one of the “best ambassadors” of animal musicality, said Henkjan Honing, a musical cognition researcher at the University of Amsterdam, who was not involved in the study.
The researchers plan to train and test other sea lions. Cook suspects that other sea lions can also fight – but that Ronan will always stand out as a star.
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