By: Isabella Wong

People drop to the beat in dance circles, but have you ever seen a rat sway to a bop? If the answer to that is no, you may be shocked to know that rats may be able to dance to a rhythm just as well as humans can.

Medical Engineer Hirokazu Takahashi and his colleagues have held experiments in which they played music with slowed-down and sped-up tempos to rats. They recorded and analyzed the rodents’ movements as the music played. The rat did not show much movement for the slow tempos. For faster rhythms, on the other hand, the team noticed a gradual increase in movement. They eventually got a video recording of the rat’s slightly more emphasized head bobs as the tempo went up to around 132 counts per minute.

At this point in the observation, scientists found that rats respond to similar tempos as humans do. However, although rats respond preferably to the same tempos as humans do, researchers are still unsure of whether rodent preferences lining up with ours is coincidental. A possibility could be that fast tempos draw attention easier than songs with slower tempos.

“The fundamental nature of beat perception and synchronization is that you predict the timing of the beat and you move predictably,” psychologist Aniruddh Patel explained. “So, we land right on the beat or a little ahead of it.” Since the rats’ movements are so tiny, it is not clear if rats can predict the beats or if they’re just reacting to it.” In other words, there is not a sufficient amount of evidence to establish facts that rats synchronize to beats in music.

Although the possibility that rats could dance to the beat is exciting to many individuals, all and all, there is not enough evidence to officially verify that this statement is a fact. However, it is a strong possibility and one that science may be able to clarify in the future.