Ronan, the marine lioness, can still keep up after all these years.
You can dance to the rhythm of rock and electronic music. But the talent of this 15 -year -old Marifornia Marifornia lionea comes out with disk music successes such as “Boogie Wonderland”.
“It simply shows off with that,” moving the head to the beat of the rhythm changes, said Peter Cook, a behavioral neuroscientist of the New College of Florida that has spent a decade studying Ronan’s rhythmic skills.
There are not many animals that show a clear ability to identify and move to the rhythm of music, beyond human beings, parrots and some primates. And then there is Ronan, a brilliant marine lioness that has led scientists to rethink the meaning of music.
After being rescued, Marina Lioness jumped to fame about a decade ago, after scientists reported on their musical skills. Since the age of 3, he has been a resident of the Marino Long Laboratory of the university of California, Santa Cruz, where Cook and other researchers have tested and perfected Ronan’s ability to recognize rhythms.
Ronan joined a select group of animals – which also includes Snowball, the famous dancer cacatúa – who have challenged the old concept that the ability to respond to music and recognize a rhythm was exclusive to the human being.
What particularly attracts attention to Ronan is that he can learn to dance to the rhythm without having to learn to sing or speak musically.
“Scientists once believed that only animals that were able to speak – like humans and parrots – could learn to find a rhythm,” said Hugo Merchant, a researcher at the Institute of Neurobiology in Mexico who did not participate in Ronan’s research.
But since Ronan jumped to fame, questions have arisen about whether he still had that ability. Were his dances from the past a chance? Was Ronan better than people regarding the pace?
To respond to the challenge, Cook and his colleagues devised a new study, which was published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports.
The result: Ronan can still dance. And better than ever.
This time, the researchers did not focus on study music, but on percussion rhythms in a laboratory. They filmed Ronan by moving his head while a drummer played three different tempos: 112, 120 and 128 beats per minute. Ronan had never been exposed to two of those rhythms, which allowed scientists to demonstrate their flexibility to recognize new tempos.
In addition, the researchers asked 10 university students to do the same, moving the forearm in the rhythm changes.
Ronan was the star.
“No human being was better to ron in all ways in which we tried the quality to maintain rhythm,” Cook said, adding that “it is much better than when I was young,” which suggests a learning for life.
The new study confirms Ronan’s place as one of the “main ambassadors” of animal musicality, said Henkjan Honing, a musical cognition researcher at the University of Amsterdam, which was not part of the study.
Researchers have planned to train and test other marine lions. Cook suspects that other specimens of the species can also follow the rhythm, but that Ronan will continue to stand out as the star.
This story was translated from English by an AP editor with the help of a generative artificial intelligence tool. A Telemundo Digital editor reviewed the translation.
){kind=link}