Rats can move their heads as fast as humans, according to a study.
The researchers monitored the head movements of the rats as they listened to music at different times. The animals maintained the best rhythm with heartbeats ranging from 120 to 140 bpm, similar to humans.
Scientists have found that mice can nod their heads in the same rhythm as humans and love to move to the music of Queen, Lady Gaga and Mozart. According to the study published in the journal Science Advances, researchers from the University of Tokyo equipped 10 rats with wireless accelerometers that can detect the slightest head movements and monitor them as they played various pieces of music.
Music included Lady Gaga's Born This Way, Queen's Another One Bites the Dust and a Mozart piano sonata, as well as Michael Jackson's Beat It and Maroon 5's Sugar. One-minute 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 timing in the range of 120-140 beats per minute, and that the mice and humans beat their heads similarly. This ability was previously thought to be unique to humans, according to the researchers.
Synchronization in animals that has not been achieved through training. or the musical performance. "The rats showed innate beat synchronization, meaning without any previous training or exposure to music, most clearly within 120-140 bpm, at which humans also show the clearest beat synchronization," he said.
The scientists began the experiment hoping to determine whether the optimal pace for small animals such as mice would be much faster than that for humans, as it correlated with physical factors such as heart rate and body size, or whether it was related to the time constant of the brain, which would mean that it would be similar in all species. The study found that rats preferred beats closer to 120 bpm, similar to humans, suggesting that the best time for beat synchronization depends on the time constant in the brain, the study author said.