Humans may not be the only species
that can shake a leg, scientists have found that some animals such as monkeys and birds possess a sense of rhythm and a fondness for dancing.
According to research presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in Chicago, scientists have filmed a sea lion dancing to the 1970s disco classic Boogie Wonderland by Earth Wind & Fire.
Monkeys, apes, birds and even sea lions have the ability to move in time to a musical beat, while bonobos can even reproduce it by drumming with sticks, scientists say.
The findings follow a chance discovery in 2008 by neuroscientists who came across a video of a pet cockatoo called Snowball that appeared to be dancing to music by the Backstreet Boys, 'The Sunday Times' reported.
Aniruddh Patel, professor of psychology at Tufts University in Massachusetts, found that the bird had been owned by a retired steelworker whose daughter, noticing that the bird often bobbed its head to music, began dancing with it, teaching it to move its feet.
Patel's discovery prompted researchers at Harvard University to hunt for more evidence of rhythm in animals.
Their findings suggested 14 species of parrots had the innate ability to dance and were also vocal mimics, meaning they could pick up and repeat sounds or words.
Another scientist, Patricia Gray, professor of biomusic at the University of North Carolina, found bonobos can pick up the beat from a human drummer.
Gray, herself a pianist, gave the animals synthesisers and invited musicians to jam with them.
She found that although bonobos could not comprehend the complexity of music they could keep time and pick out a rhythm.
Bonobos also appeared to be able to spot not just a simple beat but the sub-rhythms that divide it into parts, called beat entrainment.
In separate research, scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), trained a sea lion called Ronan to move in time to a hand signal, which was later replaced by a simple, non-musical sound signal.
Ronan was rewarded with a fish every time she bobbed her head to the varying rhythmic sounds and then she was introduced to music.
Scientists then filmed Ronan bobbing her head in perfect time with the track. She also displayed a fondness for 1970s disco classics, particularly Boogie Wonderland.
