Look out Seal, there's a new...um...seal on the music scene.
Zola doesn't belt out "Kiss From a Rose" but she's able to hum a few notes of the iconic Star Wars theme as well as “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.”
She was trained by researchers at Scotland's St. Andrews University, which this week posted video clips of Zola and two other seals mimicking human sounds.
“I was amazed how well the seals copied the model sounds we played to them,” said lead researcher Dr. Amanda Stansbury, in a release. “Copies were not perfect but given that these are not typical seal sounds it is pretty impressive.”
The findings by the Scottish Oceans Institute, published in the journal Current Biology, are not meant to suggest seals could be taught to speak like humans – but they might help in the study of speech disorders.