Have you ever yearned to see a California sea lion groove to "Everybody" by the Backstreet Boys? Well, want no more. Ronan, a 4-year-old sea lion rescued from Highway 1 in San Luis Obispo in 2009, lives at the Pinniped Cognition & Sensory Systems Laboratory at UCSC's Long Marine Laboratory. And she doesn't just live, you see. She jams.
Wired has more:
... [UC Santa Cruz] graduate student Peter Cook trained her, beginning with a simple, repeating sound, like a metronome. When Ronan bobbed her head in time with the sound she earned a fish. Eventually she graduated to more complex tunes, and she’s now able to spontaneously bop to tracks she hasn’t heard before.
Behold:
We can only hope that this aural discovery leads tribal sea lion raves at San Francisco's Pier 39. Fingers crossed.
