This might sound crazy. Some scientists thought it was a good idea to wrangle up some crocodiles and put them in an MRI machine! MRI machines are really cool! They look like something you would find on a spaceship. They are used to take pictures of the brain. Normally they are used for humans, but scientists have started using them to understand animal brains too. They have used them to study dogs, and now crocodiles!
Crocodiles are very cool creatures. They have been on the earth for 80 million years! Scientists find this interesting. They think that understanding the crocodile’s brain will help them understand what brains were like 80 million years ago. So how different is the crocodile’s brain from other animals’ brains like birds and mammals?
The scientists tested the crocodiles to see how their brains reacted to sound and sight. They actually played classical music for the crocodiles! Do you think crocodiles like Beethoven? Surprisingly crocodile brains reacted to the music in a very similar way to bird brains. That answer might be yes! Unfortunately we might never know for sure unless we ask a crocodile.
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sources:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2018.0178
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