Birds dance to music, study finds

Researchers scrutinized different birds and found that their movements were not just random, but that the birds were actually dancing, changing the tempo of their movement in sync with the music.

Details of the two studies

Dr. Aniruddh Patel, of The Neurosciences Institute in San Diego, lead author of one study stated that the team performed experiments with a cockatoo that moves to music.

"We've discovered a cockatoo named Snowball that dances to the beat of human music," Aniruddh said. "Using a controlled experiment, we've shown that if the music speeds up or slows down across a wide range, he adjusts the tempo of his dancing to stay synchronized to the beat."

A separate YouTube study was led by Adena Schachner, a graduate student in psychology at Harvard. She and her colleagues examined more than 1,000 YouTube videos of dancing animals.

Schachner analyzed the videos frame-by-frame. She carefully compared the speed of the animal to that of the music, paying special attention to alignment with individual beats. After eliminating "fake" videos where music was added to the filming of the videos, they identified 14 species of parrots and one species of elephant that demonstrated evidence of moving with the music.

Adena declared "Our analyses showed that these birds' movements were more lined up with the musical beat than we'd expect by chance. We found strong evidence that they were synchronizing with the beat, something that has not been seen before in other species."

Implications and results of the research

The study throws light on the fact that only animals capable of vocal learning, a capacity parrots share with humans, appear to be able to sync to a beat, thereby implying an evolutionary link between vocal mimicry and dance.

"Our data suggests that some of the brain mechanisms needed for human dance originally evolved to allow us to imitate sound," says Schachner.

According to Schachner, vocal mimicry alone is not sufficient for a bird to be rhythmic. The researchers are ambiguous as to why only some parrots can dance. She reflects that it may be that all parrots have a latent ability, but need social motivation.

Previous studies had indicated that moving to a beat was only a unique human trait. However, the new study establishes that birds and other mimicking species like elephants and dolphins may be capable of rhythmic dancing.

Schachner stated "After all, there is no convincing evidence that our closest relatives, chimpanzees and other apes, can keep a beat, and there is similarly no evidence that our pet dogs and cats can line up their actions with a musical beat, in spite of extensive experience with humans.

“In this work, however, we found that entrainment [to music] is not uniquely human; we find strong evidence for it in birds, specifically in parrots."

The studies were published in Current Biology.