This is Ronan. She is a California sea lion and has a better rhythm than you probably.
Scientists previously showed that Ronan, a resident of the University of California, Santa Cruz's Long Marine Corps Research Institute, was the first non-human mammal that could be trained to maintain a beat, such as moving to music. That was when Ronan was young in 2013. Researchers recently decided to test the skills of a 15-year-old sea lion again, not only improving its ability to bob its head in sync with the beat, but also showing that it is superior to most people in doing so.
“I think it's ultimately proven that humans are not the only mammals that can keep their beats,” said Tecumseh Fitch, a cognitive biologist who studied biological learning at the University of Vienna and was not involved in the new study published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports.
Parrots are known to maintain their beats by moving. Recent studies also highlight the beating abilities of other mammals, such as monkeys and rats. But more than a decade later, “the rhythmic tuning of sea lions is clearly best known among non-human vertebrates,” Dr. Fitch said.
Researchers trained Ronan for several months, focusing on improving her accuracy with the old tempos she had previously trained. They then saw how good it was to maintain the beat compared to when Ronan was three years old.
The team then tested Ronan's ability to move his head in time at a tempo of 112, 120 and 128 beats per minute, comparing it with the ability to move his arms in time at the same tempo as the abilities of 10 people aged 18-23. “The hands are like the heads of a sea lion, and their arms are like the necks of a sea lion, and they are about the same size, so you can move the same amount of space and perform tasks.”
With all the parameters tested by Dr. Cook and his colleagues, Ronan was the head of the class.
“No one was better than Ronan on any measure of accuracy and consistency,” says Dr. Cook. “And she was better than most people in all measures, so she really rose to the top.”
In 2013, Ronan's headbang ability sparked a scientific debate about whether what she is doing can actually compare to the rhythmic skills of humans, and whether this behavior is prevalent in the animal world or is limited to species that can learn complex vocality by listening to them. It includes humans and parrots, allowing you to keep your beat spontaneously.
“I think what Ronan is doing seems indistinguishable from what humans are pretty good at doing,” Dr. Cook said. He also believes that new data on Ronan's abilities further challenges the idea that the ability to travel over time in rhythm is inherent to vocal learners.
Other scientists disagree with this conclusion.
Aniruddh D. Patel, cognitive neuroscientist at Tufts University, said he stuck to the hypothesis that the ability to naturally travel over time to music is unique only to certain species that can naturally learn complex vocalizations.
He says further research should investigate sea lions' voice learning ability, and that should confirm the hypothesis. Still, he points out that the “very important difference” is that Ronan has learned to maintain the beat in training.
As a next step, Dr. Cook and his colleagues will investigate whether Ronan can travel over time with a more unpredictable beat.
“Can she do something to accelerate or slow? Can she do something that is not stable in time but changes?” Dr. Cook said. “These are things that humans can do very well. Can non-humans do them?”
