Humans do it, and birds do it, too.
By Carolyn Y. Johnson, Globe Staff
Thrashing his mohawk up and down and kicking his feet in time to a rock anthem, Snowball the headbanging cockatoo is turning the notion of what's human on its head.
Scientists have long wondered whether the ability to dance to a beat is uniquely human -- and why it evolved in the first place. Now, a pair of unusual scientific studies that relied on YouTube videos of dancing animals, the musical stylings of the boy band the Backstreet Boys, and two grooving parrots, have furnished proof that people aren't the only ones able to boogie and two-step.
A painstaking analysis of hundreds of videos revealed that 14 species of parrot got rhythm.
"When I was first starting this work, I was very skeptical. There are all kinds of ways these birds could be faking or cheating," said Adena Schachner, a Harvard University psychology graduate student and lead author of a study published today in the journal Current Biology. But the more she watched YouTube videos of dancing parrots, the more she began to wonder: "How can we make sure this phenomenon is real?"
The finding that parrots can dance to an external beat supports an emerging theory on the origins of dance, which suggests that dancing might be a byproduct of another skill parrots share with humans -- the capacity to mimic sounds.
To test that, Schachner and her adviser, psychologist Marc Hauser, teamed up with Irene Pepperberg, a Brandeis University psychology professor who for three decades studied an African grey parrot called Alex with remarkable language abilities. They played riffs of drum beats for Alex that he had never heard before, and everyone in the room stayed perfectly still.
To Schachner's surprise, Alex (who's since died) started dancing, ducking, and bobbing his head in time to the music.
A careful frame-by-frame analysis of his movements found that his head bobs were in sync with the beat. The random chance of bobbing in time to the music was calculated at less than 1 in 100 million.
Next up was Snowball, a sulphur-crested cocaktoo from Indiana who has become a YouTube celebrity for his ability to rock out to everything from Queen to Stevie Nicks.
Using the same frame-by-frame analysis, researchers watched Snowball kick his feet in the air and bob his head in time to music with many tempos and found that, like Alex, he had rhythm.
A second study published in the same journal today tested his ability to follow a variety of beats, by speeding up and slowing down the tempo of his favorite song, "Everybody," by the Backstreet Boys. The researchers, based at the nonprofit Neurosciences Institute in San Diego, found that Snowball was actually able to synchronize his movements to a rhythm and wasn't just bopping up and down arbitrarily.
Dr. Oliver Sacks, a neurologist at Columbia University and the author of "Musicophilia," said that his initial interest in music started years ago when he first noticed that Parkinson's disease patients who could not control their movement or speech could move or sing with the aid of music. Snowball first came to his attention when readers of his book argued with his contention that the ability to synchrnoize movement to a rhythm was a unique human ability, by sending him videos of the cockatoo.
"Clearly, moving in synchrony is an essential and universal part of human cutlure," Sacks said. "My own suspicion is [dancing] may become selected and reinforced in our species, because it's a biological advantage to bond people. ... It may be this thing which arose as a side effect of our speech."
To test whether the ability to dance had something to do with animals' ability to mimic sounds, the Harvard researchers then subjected nine cotton-top tamarin monkeys to the same experiment they did on Alex. The monkeys, which are not vocal mimics, but are more closely related to humans, were wallflowers.
Finally, they took their theory to the Web, systematically searching for animal dancing videos on YouTube. Fifteen species seemed to have the ability to dance, and all were capable of vocal mimicry -- 14 species of parrot, and the Asian elephant. Meanwhile, dogs, ferrets, horses, sea lions, cats, squirrels, and fish depicted as "dancing" in videos all failed to dance in time to an external beat.
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Don't scientist have anything better to research (spend money on) such as find a cure for diseases?
doesn't anon have something better to do than post inane comments on an interesting article?
The cockatoo is hilarious.
not everything is about curing cancer.
Hey anon, shut up and go back to watching the Real Housewives of New York would ya? Just because you personally can't fathom what good certain research does doesn't mean there isn't any.
Last I heard, Parkinson's was a disease. What are you working on that's better than finding cures?
Lighten up anon. Hey, can I post a video of my cockatoo dancing to "Play that funky music white boy"
Disagree with comment 1, This is "basic science". This does not directly lead to a cure for anything, but understanding just one thing more about the human brain and how human behaviors emerged, gives one more puzzle piece of the basic stuff from which a future scientist will put together an amazing breakthrough solution to some problem. Those cures for diseases don't spring from one researcher, they build on knowledge and techniques developed by people we don't know, that didn't immediately lead to anything - but were essential for the "breakthrough" and the "Aha!" moment.
All part of the puzzle there, anon. Perhaps someday they'll even find out why some people are such idiots when posting anonymously.
to #1: I was thinking the same thing until I watched the video and it made me laugh
What's in your craw negative nancy? This is a fascinating research topic and helps give a better understanding of how ours and other species brains are wired. In other words, it might not be immediately apparent but "cure for diseases" will grow out of this foundation.
wow I want a Parrot that can dance too!
This completely makes my day. Not all science needs to be serious and this just goes to prove it. And there is still is a serious aspect to it; as noted in the article, this was tied to Parkinson's disease
so what. my bird dance's to music to. Thank tax payers
People have been studying songbirds for years to understand human memory. Understanding how creatures evolve to respond to music and other environmental stimuli could have huge implications. But yeah, not nearly as important as most peoples' jobs selling things or making profits for large corporations.
Besides, lighten up. The birds are adorable!
Do not scientists have better things to do (such as curing low intelligence) than studying why the anonymous leave inane observations on anonymous comment postings?
Okay, I feel obligated to offer up a bit of a public service announcement here. If you don't already own a parrot, please do not go out and buy one. Yes, parrots are awesome and incredibly intelligent but because of that they need an extreme amount of care and attention. Otherwise they self destruct. Not to mention they live for decades. If you have a cuddly cockatoo and am wondering what I am talking about, your cockatoo probably hasn't hit puberty yet. Bottom line, these are wild animals. Not pets! If you are interested in educating yourself about these amazing animals, www.mytoos.com and and www.fosterparrots.com are great resources, especially on why not to have a parrot as a pet .
Rob,
Please provide evidence tax payers provided funding for above research. Grammar is atrocious. Concern for quality is needed. D+
Have a happy day.
I like these small research and these don't cost as much as defense type research. Avian science is still young, every discovery is greatly appreciated. If you search my username in youtube, you will see my 16 year old cockatiel dancing to Marvin Gay's Got to Give it up Part 1.
This is interesting and all but how do I get my girlfriend to STOP dancing?
Rob wes says "Thank tax payers." The only funding mentioned in the article in Current Biology is the Neurosciences Research Institute. Just where is the tax payer involved?
I think horses can dance too...I remember a youtube video of a wonderful dressage performance when the horse definitely danced, and enjoyed it! ...come to think of it...dogs too...I have seen youtubes of dogs dancing with their trainers....
Rob wes: Where does it say, anywhere in this article, that taxpayers are funding the research? it's wonderful that all sorts of things are studied. You never know when the information that comes out will help somewhere else.
If mimicry is the requirement, then you might expect mockingbirds and catbirds to dance. (I think.) Has anyone ever seen or heard of that? Might be hard to tell since they are rarely or never domesticated as far as I know.
Why should it surprise anyone that birds have rythym? After all, they sing, don't they? They invented music, and have been singing long before humans have!
It is worth doing such research because it deepens our respect for the animal world and, hopefully, will thus help to lessen the horror of animal abuse.
My parakeet loves to hear me sing, and I know he responds to me when I practice my music.
We can learn a lot from birds. As the Bible says, "Consider the birds of the air...."
Yes, it's a mistake to own a creature that can fly and then not allow him to do just that. No wonder birds, monkeys, chimps, elephants etc. get a bad rep for going nuts, who wouldn't taken totally away from what you're supposed to do? But, if you've already done that try play music for them so then can dance and get out some of there frustrations. I found it amazing that Snowball had so many moves not just one head bobbing move, but an entire choreography and that he definitely has the beat. I owned a cockatiel once who would hold on to the perch with one claw and kick out the other one when I played Mame on the record-player, he loved that song for some reason.
glad to see that boston.com is tackling the latest hard hitting news.
yeah all those years I watched my parrot bob to the music and I never realized I could get a publicatuion out of it!
It is interesting. After they finish with the parrots, they can focus their study of the connection between speech and dance on the jazz tap folks, who routinely (pun intended) scat their rhythms before they tap them out. Good speech has a rhythm to it.
Can you tap "shave and a hair cut - - six bits!"
To #12...NO YOU DO NOT WANT A PARROT!!!!! Sorry but these birds can be a real PITA and you would prob just end up hurting the bird more than anything else. Unless of course you already own birds.
I believe that I speak for the majority of my fellow tax payers in the Boston area when I wonder whether any of this "scientific" research is being funded by the government, in which case it is imperative that immigration services make sure that all of these tropical birds are in the country legally.
Thank you.
Oh Aww That's Very Cute!! I Love Them To The Dance. They're Very Smart True!! That's Why I Love Animals. :)
To Linda Nordstrom: I'm a horse person all the way, and I've seen that dressage performance, which is indeed remarkable.
The other thing I've seen is how the riders design those kinds of performances. They use videotape and a metronome to time the horse's strides during each of the different parts of the routine, then they carefully select music that matches the horse's rhythm. The result is that it appears as though the horse is matching the music, when in fact it's the reverse.
I would love to believe that my horse could actually dance, but I don't think she's wired that way. Fortunately she's wonderful enough even if she'll never feel the need to shake her groove thang.
"Don't scientist have anything better to research (spend money on) such as find a cure for diseases?
Posted by anon April 30, 09 01:47 PM"
We need to deport these people to a new country: "DoofTard Nation". They can leave once they have fully mapped and explained the moron area of human genome.
This blogger might want to review your comment before posting it.
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