Monkeys and apes also fail move to the music. In addition to humans and parrots, dolphins and elephants fit the bill, but researcher have not observed either of those species spontaneously dancing. That includes the capacity for nonverbal movement imitation, a tendency to form long-term social bonds, the ability to learn complex sequences of actions, and attentiveness to communicative movements. So why can the bird get its groove on while other pets like cats, dogs and hamsters just stare blankly? Patel believes that dancing is limited to animals that are “vocal learners,” which can learn various sounds from their environment.Īccording to a press release, the researchers proposed four other traits that converge to make humans and parrots able to break it down on the dancefloor. The fact that we see this in another animal suggests that if you have a brain with certain cognitive and neural capacities, you are predisposed to dance.” It seems that dancing to music isn’t purely a product of human culture. “There are moves in there, like the Madonna Vogue move, that I just can’t believe. “We were amazed,” Patel tells Ian Sample at The Guardian. The research appears in the journal Current Biology. She also found that Snowball dances a little differently to each tune, a sign of flexibility and, just perhaps, some avian creativity. When Keehn, now a neuroscientist at San Diego State University, later analyzed the footage, she found the bird developed 14 distinct movements with no previous training, including combinations of head bobs, foot lifts, head bangs, and the hand and head motions associated with voguing. Joanne Jao Keehn recorded Snowball dancing to Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust” and Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun.” During that research, he noticed that Snowball seemed to be expanding his repertoire. In 2008, he tested the bird’s ability to keep the beat, which was very good. Among Snowball’s early fans was neuroscientist Aniruddh Patel, now at Tufts University, who recognized Snowball's moves as potentially genuine dancing-a very rare phenomenon in animals. The dancing bird was an early YouTube sensation, and appeared on the Tonight Show and starred in a Taco Bell commercial. He wasn’t lying Irena Shulz, director of Bird Lovers Only who adopted the bird, took a video of Snowball jamming out to his favorite song, “Everybody.” He also left a Backstreet Boys CD, telling the staff that Snowball loved to dance. Snowball’s story began in 2007, reports Ed Yong at The Atlantic, when the cockatoo’s original owner surrendered him to the Bird Lovers Only rescue center in Dyer, Indiana. But a new study confirms that at least one animal can truly get its groove on: Viral video star Snowball, the sulfur-crested cockatoo, really does move to the beat, and a new study has catalogued 14 dance moves the plucky bird has developed to express himself. Most other "dancing" animals- even dog dancing champions-are really just responding to training and not spontaneously busting a move. Dancing seems like a decidedly human activity-it requires the technology to produce music, innate rhythm and an ability to respond to music.
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