By: Jingwei Zhao

Have you ever heard a song and started dancing to it? Have you ever tapped your feet or bopped your head to the rhythm? The ability to recognize the beat of a song and move your body is called beat synchronization. It was originally believed that only a few species like humans and parrots could achieve this surprisingly complex feat, but recent data could have proven us wrong.

During an experiment, a group of researchers found out that rats also may have beat synchronization. The team played Mozart’s “Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major” (K. 448) to the rats. They sped up the tempo, slowed it down, and played it at a normal pace. By using visuals and wireless accelerometers surgically placed on the rat, they studied the rat’s responses.

The scientists assumed that body size triggered how the tempo affected head bobbing.

According to their logic, a rat would need a quicker tempo to achieve the same bobbing effect as humans. However, during the actual experiment, the team found something interesting. As Aniruddh Patel, a psychologist at Tufts university explains, “There are lots of reasons to think maybe (rats) would prefer faster rhythms. But that’s not what they found.”

The rats head bobbed much more noticeably to music around 132 beats were minute–roughly the same range as humans for bobbing their heads. It is now confirmed that the rat joins the group of humans, parrots, and even seals for their ability to recognize a beat and bop to it.

However, Patel still has reservations. Due to how small the rats’ movements are, he finds it hard to identify if the rats are predicting the timing of the beat, or just reacting after it occurs.