I love babies, but even those who aren’t usually enamored with them find it hard not to smile when a baby dances. The music starts and they just start bobbing their bodies as best they know how, and it is adorable.

It’s no surprise then, that when I was looking for something else, I couldn't help but learn a little about a scientific study on dancing babies. It turns out that babies are not very good at dancing on beat, but on the off chance they do get the rhythm going, their brains enjoy the experience that much more!

Talk of the Nation Science Friday, a show on NPR, puts up interesting videos and published this one explaining a bit more about the study:

Why bother studying dancing babies? My guess is that even scientists can’t escape the addictive nature of baby-dancing cuteness. The real reason has more to do with figuring out why babies – or anybody for that matter – dances. If babies dance without being taught, then that means their brains are hardwired to dance – it’s in their genes. Our brains haven’t changed much since humans have been around so a long time ago the instinct to dance must have helped people to survive and have kids, otherwise the “dancing gene” (or whatever they find that causes babies to dance) wouldn’t be so common.

As far as I know, scientist also haven’t learned why some of us (including yours truly) never made it past the out-of-sync, baby-bob style of dancing. Perhaps in a future study?