It may sound a little crazy, but seals are killer when it comes to rhythm

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2022-10-26 10:01

International

Much like their 80s / 90s pop namesake, seals know a killer rhythm when they hear one, according to international researchers who say they've found the first evidence of a vocal-learning mammal, apart from humans, discriminating rhythmic patterns. The team exposed 20 wild-born harbour seals to music-like playbacks of call sequences varying in tempo, length and regularity. Without training, one-year-old seals differentiated between more and less rhythmic sequences, looking more frequently or for longer as tempo, regularity or call duration increased.

Media release

From: The Royal Society

Spontaneous rhythm discrimination in a mammalian vocal learner

Why are we such chatty, musical animals? One evolutionary hypothesis links our capacities for speech and music: It states that only those animals which learn new vocalizations may have rhythm processing skills. Indeed, rhythm processing and vocalization learning co-occur in humans and birds. How about other mammals? We tested rhythm processing in seals; like humans, seals learn vocalizations. Spontaneously and without training, 1-year-olds perceived the rhythmicity of other seals’ vocalizations and discriminated between more vs. less rhythmic sound sequences. Another mammal, apart from us, shows rhythm processing and vocalization learning; perhaps these two skills coevolved in both humans and seals.

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Journal/
conference: Biology Letters

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, The Netherlands

Funder: The work of A.R. and L.V. was supported by a Max Planck Research Group (MPRG) awarded to A.R.

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