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Rats bop to Lady Gaga in curious science experiment – http://gcn.ie/

News Editor

The University of Toyko has conducted several experiments on rats to determine if they can move to a beat, and like queers in The George on a Friday night, they had amazing results when playing the queen herself, Lady Gaga.

Prior to this experiment, many researchers believed that moving to a beat was only achievable by humans, but the grooving rodents proved them wrong. The scientists took ten rats that were nine to ten-weeks-old and ethically attached wireless accelerometers to their heads which recorded their movements. They proceeded to expose the rats to songs of varying genres, occasionally increasing the beats per minute (BPM) to see how they fared.

The most comfortable BPM for humans to keep up with ranges between 120-140 BPM, as Associate Professor Hirokazu Takahashi explains, “The auditory cortex, the region of our brain that processes sound, was also tuned to 120-140 bpm, which we were able to explain using our mathematical model of brain adaptation.” The five songs the researchers chose that were in that range of BPM were Mozart’s ‘K.448’, Queen’s ‘Another One Bites the Dust’, Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat It’, Maroon 5’s ‘Sugar’ and last but certainly not least Lady Gaga’s iconic ‘Born This Way’ which goes at around 124 BPM.

The institution has released a video of one its rats listening to Gaga’s tune, and it is beyond adorable and iconic to watch it find the beat to the queer anthem. The songs were also played to 12 human test subjects with the the accelerometer attached to the top of their headphones, and they had no trouble bopping to the tunes provided. After the tests, researchers found that both mammals kept to the beat best at 132 BPM. Takahashi commented on their findings in a press release, saying, “To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on innate beat synchronization in animals that was not achieved through training or musical exposure,” making this a groundbreaking discovery that rats like to get down too.

After the news broke, Gaga fans couldn’t help but get excited that they strangely relate to these small rodents. Twitter user @gay_magic_bae commented: “Proof that Lady Gaga is a goddess, and that the rats are gay,” while @cheburashka2000 shared their plan saying: “I’m playing Lady Gaga for my rats.” User @HausOfBitchs playfully shared a video of a rat nibbling on a pink Lady Gaga oreo with the caption reading, “Chromatica is their fav album.” It’s safe to say that the Monsters never fail to deliver creative memes when it comes to the iconic LGBTQ+ activist.

Jokes aside, this new research is only the beginning of a new series of projects that will be conducted at the University of Tokyo. Takahashi shares his plans for the future, saying, “Next, I would like to reveal how other musical properties such as melody and harmony relate to the dynamics of the brain. I am also interested in how, why and what mechanisms of the brain create human cultural fields such as fine art, music, science, technology and religion.” He rounds off his thoughts on his research with a sweet comment, “Also, as an engineer, I am interested in the use of music for a happy life.” With this, we hope to keep seeing little lab rats vibing to Lady Gaga’s greatest hits, and if you have a pet rat at home, why not test this out yourself and indulge your favourite pet to some iconic beats?

© 2022 GCN (Gay Community News). All rights reserved.

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