Rats can bop their heads to a rhythm as humans can, and like moving to music by Queen, Lady Gaga, and Mozart, scientists have discovered.
Researchers at the University of Tokyo fitted 10 rats with wireless accelerometers that could detect the slightest head movements and monitored them while playing several pieces of music, according to the study published in the journal
Science Advances.
The music included Lady Gaga's Born This Way, Queen's Another One Bites the Dust, and a Mozart piano sonata, as well as Beat It by Michael Jackson and Sugar by Maroon 5.
One-minute-long snippets of the songs were played at four different speeds, and the same was done with 20 human participants.
The results found that the rats' had the best beat synchronization in the range of 120-140 beats per minute and that rats and humans bopped their heads to the beats in a similar way.
This skill was previously thought to be unique to humans, according to the researchers.
Uomini e topi.
