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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
For the love of all that is holy, do not raise that bird on disco.
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.
I have a cockatiel and he's about eight years old. He has a little metal band around one of his feet, I guess to prove that he was domestically bred and not poached (not sure exactly). He does one thing that I've never seen another bird do, though it's not as extreme as actually dancing. If I play certain percussive music or if I drum on my desk with my fingers, he will tap that metal band against his wooden perch to either the same rhythm or the same rhythm with little variations.
Sometimes he'll do this as a sort of "Simon" game where I'm supposed to match his little drum-solo and then he tries to match mine. It never occurred to me that birds would properly dance, though this one does make displays etc that are a lot like dancing. Either way, they definitely do have the required sense of rhythm. I've kept birds for a number of years and I can say that you can guess but you never really know for certain just how smart they are, except maybe to say "probably more than you think".
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
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.
Wow, I thought dancing was impressive, but this guy has a bird that's in a metal band!
Just because you sold your soul to the devil that needn't make you a teetotaler. --The Devil and Daniel Webster
You'd be amazed the degree to which dogs will plan, including practical jokes. (Speaking from 40 years as a pro dog trainer...) Anything a bright 5 year old child can conceive of, a dog can think up too. Favourites seem to be dunking the unsuspecting in any handy mud or water. I once had a Chesapeake who figured out that dumping people off rafts was a wonderful joke, resulting in lots of amusing screams... and he always waited until they were well out from shore before doing so!
As to parrots dancing, I doubt this comes as much of a surprise to most long-time owners of such birds. They are very observant and imitative, and it doesn't take much to get them responding to whatever they hear.
They also play nasty tricks... my sister's parrot hated her dog, and developed the following routine:
Parrot: Jaz, COME! :)
Jaz obediently comes to the parrot's cage.
Parrot: Jaz, SIT!
Jaz obediently sits.
Parrot: BAD DOG!
Jaz, familiar with his role in this comedy and apparently just indulging the parrot, wags his tail but otherwise ignores this.
As to animals' notion of music... I use big plastic barrels for doghouses. They are fairly resonant. Sometimes young dogs dig like madmen in them, but after a while I realised it wasn't just random futile digging -- they'd do various specific rhythms unlike what they'd do if digging a hole. Finally it occurred to me -- they are DRUMMING. They enjoy the noise for its own sake. I've also caught dogs dragging a stick along the fence to make noise, just like small kids will do.
What do you get if you offer a kindergarten a variety of "instruments"?? A wide variety of percussion and not much else. Dogs, having about the same congnitive facility as a 5 year old child, do much the same.
At a guess, parrots probably are about equivalent to a 2 year old... and what do most toddlers do as soon as they're steady on their feet? attempt SOME form of "dancing" whenever they hear music.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?