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"No, this is not another April Fools' Day prank. \nFor the first time, a non-human mammal has proven its ability to \"keep the beat\" with music. Prior to the study by the University of California, Santa Cruz, this \"rhythmic entrainment\" was only seen in humans and birds talented in vocal mimicry. \nScientists trained a musically inclined sea lion named Ronan to \"bob her head in time with rhythmic sounds,\" according to a UCSC press release. Ronan later showed that she could transfer this skill to music and tempos she hadn't yet heard. \nHer sense of rhythm weakens the widespread theory that beat-keeping requires a capacity for \"complex vocal learning,\" as sea lions are inflexible in the sounds they make, and can't perform vocal mimicry, the release explained. So, beat-keeping may be more common in the animal kingdom than previously thought.\n\"Ronan's success poses a real problem for the theory that vocal mimicry is a necessary precondition for rhythmic entrainment [keeping the beat],\" said Peter Cook, the study's lead author. \"Our finding represents a cautionary note for an idea that was really starting to take hold in the field of comparative psychology.\"\nCook added that Ronan, who he trained for several months, stays on beat better than some birds. Aside from bobbing her head to Backstreet Boys' \"Everybody,\" Ronan also gets down to Earth, Wind &amp; Fire's \"Boogie Wonderland\" (her favorite song). \n\"A California Sea Lion (Zalophus californianus) Can Keep the Beat: Motor Entrainment to Rhythmic Auditory Stimuli in a Non Vocal Mimic\" was published Monday in the Journal of Comparative Psychology.\nWhat do you think of the study? Tell us in the comments, below. \nScreenshot image courtesy of YouTube, PinnipedLab"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2013/04/02/sea-lion-bobs-head-study/>