Researchers have taught a sea lion to keep a beat to music (video)

by Larra Morris

The Santa Cruz Patch reports that researchers at the University of California Santa Cruz have taught one of their resident sea lions, Ronan, how to keep a beat. In this video, you can see her bopping her head to “Boogie Wonderland” by Earth, Wind & Fire and other funky songs. Peter Cook of the University’s Pinniped Cognition and Sensory Systems Laboratory confirms that Ronan is the “first non-human mammal shown able to find and keep the beat with musical stimuli” which “challenges earlier evidence from humans and parrots suggesting that complex vocal mimicry is a necessary precondition for flexible rhythmic entrainment.” According to the University’s Newscenter, Cook is the first author of the study which was published online April 1, 2013 in the Journal of Comparative Psychology.
via Laughing Squid

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Researchers have taught a sea lion to keep a beat to music (video)

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