This Sea Lion Can Dance to the Beat Better Than Humans

If you remember Snowball the cockatoo grooving to the Backstreet Boys in 2007, you might also recall Ronan, the Santa Cruz sea lion who made headlines in 2013 for bobbing her head to the beat of “Boogie Wonderland.”

Well, Ronan, Bay Area’s beloved dancing sea lion, is back in the spotlight twelve years later — and she headbangs still with serious rhythm. In a new study, researchers found that Ronan can not only bob her head to a beat — she can do it with more precision than some humans.

Researchers are looking at how animals perceive and respond to musical elements like rhythm and beat in the growing scientific field of biomusicality. Ronan’s sense of rhythm helped scientists understand whether the ability to move to a beat is uniquely human or something other animals can do, too.

“If sea lions and humans are doing the same thing, where does rhythm come from and in what ways are humans unique?” said Peter Cook, the study’s lead author and a comparative neuroscientist now at New College of Florida. Cook is also a researcher with UC Santa Cruz’s Institute of Marine Sciences.

Ronan first stunned researchers in 2013 when she moved in sync with music, adjusting her head movements along with a song, staying with the tempo as it changed. In this latest study, researchers tested her beat-keeping again — this time against humans.

Researchers filmed Ronan bobbing her head to a metronome at three speeds —112, 120, and 128 beats per minute. Previously, she practiced only at 120 beats per minute, so the other two rhythms were new to her. At her best, Ronan stayed within just 15 milliseconds of the beat, ten times faster than a human blink.

Then, researchers recruited 10 UC Santa Cruz undergrads with no formal musical training beyond what they received in middle school to see how their rhythm compared.

Instead of bobbing their heads, they were asked to move their arms in time with the metronome. “We had them waggle their arms up and down, basically covering about the same amount of space that Ronan covers with her head. And then we looked at the precision and the consistency of Ronan and the humans,” Cook said.

The results? Ronan came out on top.

She was more consistent and precise than any of the humans in the experiment. “A couple of the best humans got close to her, but no human was more consistent than she was on any of the stimuli we gave them,” Cook said.

While rhythm is her claim to fame, Ronan has contributed to various studies in sensory biology, learning, memory, and diving physiology. Over the past 12 years, she participated in roughly 2,000 short rhythm exercises, typically lasting just 10–15 seconds each. Long breaks between sessions, sometimes lasting years, ensure that she isn’t overtrained, Cook said.

“Realistically, if you added up the amount of rhythmic exposure Ronan has had since she’s been with us, it is probably dwarfed by what a typical 1-year-old kid has heard,” Cook said.

Researchers plan to work with more sea lions to test their rhythm perception. “Is there something in the sea lion brain that is related to vocal learning, and could that somehow support rhythm? We’re explicitly testing that,” Cook said, adding that he suspects that other sea lions may also be able to keep a beat, but Ronan is still the top contender.

This latest study added to a growing body of evidence that rhythm perception might not be exclusive to humans or even to animals known for vocal learning. That opens new doors for exploring the roots of music, cognition, and the role of rhythm across species.

“Ronan is a very well-trained animal who does so many different scientific experiments and does training for husbandry and health,” Cook said. “She’s not a typical sea lion.”