Parrots Can Dance

juuri sends in an NPR article about the consensus created among scientists that some birds actually dance to music. "The results of this study are reported in the journal Current Biology, along with another scientific paper inspired by YouTube videos of dancing animals. Adena Schachner is a graduate student in the psychology department of Harvard University. She says she was familiar with the idea that some people had made videos of birds supposedly dancing. ... She and her colleagues eventually analyzed more than 5,000 videos. 'Imagine watching YouTube eight hours a day for a month,' she says. 'That's pretty much what we did. It was amusing for perhaps the first couple of hours.'" juuri adds, "While this makes them somewhat unique in the animal world, as only three animals are now known to dance by verifiable proofs, what struck me more was that this was the first time YouTube had helped forge a new scientific understanding. Given the explosive growth of uploading videos and people watching them, what other new understandings and popular misconceptions will be proven or disproved due to this emerging media?"

Comments

All birds can, actually

[BadAnalogyGuy]

They can dance if they want to.

Re:All birds can, actually

[stonedcat]

They can leave their friends behind.

Re:All birds can, actually

[Bobfrankly1]

You don't say "thanks" when someone infects you with a catchy song, you say "Domo Arigato, Mr Roboto"! Turn-about is fair play.

Re:Damnit!

[linguizic]

You might not be able to dance, but I'm sure you can at least parrot it.