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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?"
They can dance if they want to.
Another thing parrots can do that I can't! When will this humiliation end?
The enemies of Democracy are
I've got a Sun Conure, which happens to be the same bird in the picture in the summary. He's only 5 months old, so he's not all out dancing, but he does seem to be starting to respond to music, as he'll start to bob his head in time for a few seconds at a time. Search youtube for kimba's song, and you can see the Sun Conure groovin to a performing beatboxer.
We are the Modern Web (secret secret)
With YRO instead (secret secret)
Housed in FBI DB's (secret secret)
That no one else can see!
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/01/1247258
or, +1 Chuck Finale with mockband Jeffster!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Which animals are those? Oregon zoo has concerts close too the elephant pens. Zoo workers their claim the elephants do dance to the music. So are the 3 animals humans, parrots, and elephants, or what?
This is where reading the full article pays off. The answer is in there lazy one.
Wait... you expect people to actually RTFA? You're new here, aren't you?
Reading The Fine Article confirms that my guess was correct -- it is humans, parrots, and elephants. However, I believe an elephant would be a poor choice of dance partner, because when that gray old lady steps on your feet, it is really gonna hurt!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I have a Bare-Eyed Cockatoo, and he dances constantly, all the while chanting "dance dance dance." He also chants "shake shake shake your booty" while dancing. I didn't try to teach him either of these things, he taught himself. Of course I taught him the words, but not on purpose, he just picked them up from me. I take him in the shower with me about once a week, and encourage him to shake off before I take him out of the shower stall by telling him to "shake your little white booty" and singing a bit of KC and the Sunshine Band. He also likes music, especially opera, and will sing along with the women, but not the men. He speaks to me with appropriate responses on a regular basis. If one of my other birds gets off its cage he will say "get back on your cage" at it. They are much smarter and aware than most people give them credit for.
On behalf of the rest of the animal world:
"only three animals are now known to dance by verifiable proofs"
Including humans? They are animals you know.
The assertion is made due to tests designed and carried out by humans using criteria based on human standards. In species specific behavior, humans can't possibly know when those species are dancing according to their own standards, or for that matter when they're doing something they'd consider to be other than dancing but fits the human criteria as a false positive.
Another species might well classify most if not all of human dancing as pre-mating ritual, as do some humans. And why not both, escaping from species-specific standards? This would make mating ritual to be dance in thousands of species.
Of course, like many recent articles, they have to make YouTude into some sort of oracle with the material qualitatively different, in order to make it more relevant. It's not. It's just easier than collecting data on your own.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
My wife's parrot can whistle "The Happy Wanderer." As a matter of fact, he'll whistle it continuosly until you are ready to strangle him.
Parrots are like a three year old child in a lot of ways, including repeating a good thing ad infinitum.
This ain't rocket surgery.
Otters are the rats of the ocean. Specifically the behaviors of the males during child rearing are atrocious. An adult male will actually hold his own children hostage until the female provides food.