Ronan, the sea lion who plays the metronomes

Is a sense of rhythm unique to humans? Insects, such as fireflies and crickets, can synchronize their visual and audio signals just as well as we do when listening to rhythmic stimuli. But these invertebrates only do so at very specific frequencies. And among mammals, none seemed to have the ability to adapt to different tempi, as our species effortlessly does.

That is, until Ronan came into the picture. This sea lion, born in the wild in 2008, had been returned to the sea three times after stranding on a California beach due to malnutrition. A trip by the animal along State Route 1 along the Pacific Ocean finally led researchers at the Pinniped Lab, the pinniped laboratory at the University of California, Santa Cruz, to take this particularly curious sea lion under their wing.

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