Researchers Used Lady Gaga to Show That Rats Can Keep a Beat – Them

Rats — they’re just like us, for real.

The LGBTQ+ community’s favorite little rodents, as it turns out, possess an innate ability to move to a beat that is very similar to humans’ ability to do the same, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Tokyo. And how did they find this out? By treating the rats to the music of Lady Gaga and Queen, of course.

The ability to keep time to a beat, known as beat synchronization, has previously been thought to be a skill limited to humans. That tempo usually happens between 120 to 140 beats per minute (BPM), and is utilized within many musical compositions — such as “Born This Way” (which has a BPM of 124). Researchers hypothesized two reasons for this optimal tempo: first, that it’s determined by physical movement, since the average human walking speed roughly correlates with 120 BPM. If this were true, then the rats would have a much higher optimal tempo. Secondly, researchers hypothesized that optimal tempo is determined by the time constant within the brain, or the speed at which our brains can respond to stimuli, which would mean that the optimal tempo would remain constant across species.

As it turns out, more evidence emerged for the latter hypothesis. The researchers played Mozart’s Piano Sonata K.448, Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way,” Michael Jackson’s “Beat It,” Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust,” and “Sugar” by Maroon 5 at various tempos for a cohort of rats; the humans, however, were limited to Mozart. The researchers measured the head movements of each cohort, and found that both species kept the best time at 132 BPM. Specifically, the researchers found that “head acceleration” — as in, nodding your head in time to music — in humans was comparable to that of rats. If you’re not weirdly moved by the fact that rats innately respond to the sweet sounds of everyone’s favorite pride month anthem with a little head nod, we are not the same.

This is apparently the first study on nonhuman mammals’ ability to do a little dance, according to Hirokazu Takahashi, an associate professor at the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Information Science and Technology. “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,” Takahashi said in a press release.

In the future, Takahashi expressed a desire to research other musical properties, such as melody and harmony, and how they relate to the dynamics of the brain. “Also, as an engineer, I am interested in the use of music for a happy life,” Takahashi said. Maybe someday, scientists can explain what is going on with so many gay people’s brains that it makes them violently obsessed with Taylor Swift for some reason. I would love to know.

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