Rats can dance to Lady Gaga, Maroon 5, due to innate sense of rythym: study

A new study by researchers from the University of Tokyo has found that humans are not the only ones to bop their heads to musical beats.

The curious scientists played different popular songs by Michael Jackson, Lady Gaga and other singers as well as a Mozart Sonata at four tempos for rats and found that they too nodded their heads to the music.

The rats displayed the behaviour on camera. Scientists also sensed movement via a miniature sensor that was strapped to their heads.

"Rats displayed innate, that is, without any training or prior exposure to music, beat synchronization most distinctly within 120-140 beats per minute (bpm)," Associate Professor Hirokazu Takahashi was quoted as saying by MailOnline.

Humans too naturally recognise and respond to the beat of the music, a phenomenon known as beat synchronisation, in the same range. Scientists found through a computer model that this tempo was identified by the brain's time constant, that is, the speed with which the organ is able to respond to any stimulus.

Takashi added that the experiment proved that the animal brain could be "useful in elucidating the perceptual mechanisms of music."

The first time an animal demonstrated its capacity to nod to music was a cockatoo named Snowball who bobbed to a song by the Backstreet Boys. The video went viral in 2009. Neuroscientists and researchers from The Neurosciences Institute in San Diego studied the bird following the viral video.

They concluded that dancing was not limited to humans.

The new study published in Science Advances aimed to find out whether rats, often used in labs, too responded the same way to music. "Music exerts a strong appeal to the brain and has profound effects on emotion and cognition," Takashi explained, adding that music's potential would be known better if we revealed the "neural mechanism underlying this empirical fact."

Scientists fit tiny, wireless accelerometers on ten lab rats. These tiny sensors could detect even the slightest of movements. First, one-minute clips of Mozart's Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major, K. 448 at four different tempos were played.

They also played pop songs like Beat It by Michael Jackson, Sugar by Maroon 5 and Another One Bites the Dust by Queen. 

Twenty humans were also made part of the study who also strapped accelerometers. Results showed that both rats and humans had responded the same way. Interestingly, sped-up music decreased the level of head jerking in both groups as well.