Ronan, the seal with a sense of rhythm

It was long thought that grasping a rhythm and moving to it was a typically human trait. However, in a study , a female sea lion was able to keep the beat better than several other control subjects. The seal, named "Ronan," lives in the University of California's marine research laboratory and has long impressed scientists with her extraordinary abilities.

In a video (see below), Ronan can be seen raising her head precisely to the steady beat of the drums—a movement most reminiscent of headbanging at rock concerts. Switching between different speeds poses no problem for her: She can consistently follow not just 112, but also 120 and 128 beats per minute.

The situation was different with the human subjects used for comparison. Ten students were asked to try to keep the beat while moving their forearms up and down. Their performance was filmed and then compared with that of the sea lion. The result: Ronan was either as good or better than the students when it came to moving in sync with the music.

The seal had already been tested for its musical abilities at the age of three and was already able to recognize rhythms and nod its head accordingly. However, compared to previous tests, the animal had now, at the age of 15, significantly improved its sense of rhythm.

That a sea lion is so musical is fundamentally surprising. "Scientists originally believed that only animals capable of vocal learning, such as humans and parrots, could also learn to find a beat," Hugo Merchant, a researcher at the Institute of Neurobiology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, told the Guardian newspaper .

Vocal learning means being able to learn new sounds through imitation; some birds are particularly good at this. In 2007, the cockatoo "Snowball" became an internet star with a video in which he danced and attempted to sing to the Backstreet Boys' hit "Everybody." According to an analysis published in Current Biology, Snowball is said to have 14 clearly distinguishable "moves"—giving him a broader movement repertoire than many human dancers.

Studies have also shown that rats and singing lemurs , which have limited vocal learning capabilities, can grasp musical patterns and rhythms. While other seal species are capable of vocal learning, this has never been observed in sea lions in the wild, the researchers write in their study. This is what makes Ronan so interesting for scientists.

Exactly how animals develop a sense of rhythm, and whether and how this actually relates to the learning of sounds, is not yet fully understood. Researchers assume that other sea lions can also headbang with a sense of rhythm—but that Ronan's unique talent may set her apart among them.