{"id":44550,"date":"2021-07-23T08:10:52","date_gmt":"2021-07-23T15:10:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=44550"},"modified":"2021-07-23T08:10:52","modified_gmt":"2021-07-23T15:10:52","slug":"friday-fun-can-birds-really-dance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2021\/07\/23\/friday-fun-can-birds-really-dance\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday Fun: Can Birds Really Dance?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em><strong>Huge Hat Tip to Mitch, who inspired this post!<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h3>\n<p>Mitch was kind enough to recently share a delightful video titled <strong><em>&#8220;Birds Can Dance!&#8221;<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Despite my hearing deficit, I thought it was very cool!\u00a0 Although it was the creative and complex editing that made them look like they were dancing, it was very entertaining.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"BIRDS can DANCE!\" width=\"695\" height=\"391\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/HzKsfhalAPo?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>But it caused me to start wondering: Can birds <em><u>actually<\/u><\/em> dance?\u00a0 So I started searching, and it turns out the answer is a scientifically proven <strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">YES<\/span>!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>But first we need to recognize that this was the answer to the scientific definition of what &#8220;Dance&#8221; means, because it&#8217;s been long believed that only humans have the ability to dance.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>&#8220;Dancing&#8221;<\/em> is an untutored, spontaneous response where the animal moves on the beat, matching motion to music. \u00a0The animal cannot have a trainer. \u00a0There cannot be a human in the room whose moves it copies. \u00a0It cannot be rewarded for its movements.\u00a0 It cannot spend weeks exposed to the same tune. \u00a0And when the music changes tempo, it has to change with it, sticking to the beat. \u00a0So the &#8220;dance&#8221; is triggered by sound, but the moves come from within the animal itself.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/krulwich\/2014\/04\/01\/297686709\/the-list-of-animals-who-can-truly-really-dance-is-very-short-who-s-on-it\">https:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/krulwich\/2014\/04\/01\/297686709\/the-list-of-animals-who-can-truly-really-dance-is-very-short-who-s-on-it<\/a><\/p>\n<p>And we need to realize that none of the animals that science has decided can truly &#8220;dance&#8221; are going to give any of the contestants on <em>&#8220;Dancing With the Stars&#8221;<\/em> a run for their money.<\/p>\n<p>But still, they have provided not only a lot of entertainment for the masses \u2013 but also served science well.\u00a0 So how did a sulphur-crested cockatoo named Snowball get to be a main participant in a science research project?<\/p>\n<p>It all began with a YouTube video of him boogieing to <em>&#8220;Everybody (Back Street&#8217;s Back)<\/em>\u00a0by the Back Street Boys \u2026 I kid you not!<\/p>\n<p>A colleague of Dr. Aniruddh Patel, then a neurobiologist at the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Neurosciences_Institute\">Neurosciences Institute<\/a>\u00a0in La Jolla, CA, (now a professor at Tufts) asked him to watch the video of Snowball grooving, and Dr. Patel reports his reaction:<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cI still remember it.\u00a0 I was staring at the screen and my jaw just hit the floor.\u00a0 I thought, \u2018Is this real?\u00a0 Could this actually be happening?\u2019\u00a0 Within minutes I\u2019d written Snowball\u2019s owner.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Snowball (TM) - Our Dancing Cockatoo\" width=\"695\" height=\"521\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/N7IZmRnAo6s?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Snowball had been taken to a bird shelter in northern Indiana because the daughter, who was the primary caretaker, began college.\u00a0 The dad and daughter also provided Irena Schulz, director of the shelter, with a CD by the Back Street Boys, and told her to play it if Snowball looked bored.<\/p>\n<p>One day Irena cranked up the CD and was astounded at what happened next.\u00a0 She immediately grabbed a video of Snowball&#8217;s strutting his moves on the back of a chair and submitted it to YouTube \u2013 where it almost immediately went viral!<\/p>\n<p>A few months later she got a call from Dr. Patel who was astounded by the birds dancing.\u00a0 &#8220;Let&#8217;s design an experiment to see if this is real.&#8221;\u00a0 Ms. Schulz, who had previously worked as a molecular biologist, agreed: &#8220;Yeah, let&#8217;s do that!&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>They made 11 different versions of <em>&#8220;Everybody,&#8221;<\/em> all at the same pitch, but changed the tempos from 2.5% to 20% faster and then slower than the original.<\/p>\n<p>They played each version and videotaped Snowball&#8217;s response, and then analyzed each video frame by frame.<\/p>\n<p>Snowball wasn&#8217;t perfect (and was actually pretty bad at the slower tempos).\u00a0 But he was on the beat at least 60% of the time \u2013 very much like a toddler when learning to dance to music.\u00a0 Statistical analysis of the data confirmed that Snowball was, in fact, dancing in time with the music.<\/p>\n<p>To my mind, equally impressive is that Snowball had developed a repertoire of 14 distinct moves \u2013 none of which were taught to him.\u00a0 He created them on his own.\u00a0 To be tabulated as a distinct move it had to occur on two separate occasions.\u00a0 Let&#8217;s enjoy them:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Scientists discover Snowball the cockatoo has 14 distinct dance moves\" width=\"695\" height=\"391\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/iMjr8MsB1qo?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>At the same time Dr. Patel was studying Snowball, another research group at Harvard was studying Alex, an African grey parrot, who also danced.\u00a0 They also concluded that Alex&#8217;s movements were synchronized with the beat of the music, and did not occur merely by chance.\u00a0 They wondered what feature(s) these animals shared with humans that enabled them to dance.<\/p>\n<p>One of the researchers, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.adenaschachner.com\/\">Adena Schachner<\/a> (then a graduate student at Harvard) said: \u00a0&#8220;It had recently been theorized that vocal mimicry (the ability to acquire sounds through learning) might be related to the ability to move to a beat. \u00a0The particular theory was that\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/natural+selection\/\">natural selection<\/a>\u00a0for vocal mimicry resulted in a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/brain+mechanism\/\">brain mechanism<\/a>\u00a0that was also needed for moving to a beat. This theory made a really specific prediction: Only animals that can mimic sound should be able to keep a beat.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Schachner realized that since people loved posting videos of their critters &#8220;performing,&#8221; she decided YouTube would be a wonderfully unique research resource.<\/p>\n<p>She collected over 5,000 YouTube videos of wildly different animals (dogs, cats, chimps, orangutans, horses, etc.) and analyzed them frame-by-frame to see it they were moving to the beat.\u00a0 She narrowed the &#8220;dancers&#8221; down to 39 animals.\u00a0 Twentynine of them were in the parrot family, comprised of 14 different species.\u00a0 The rest were Asian elephants.<\/p>\n<p>The one feature that all animals who can dance share with humans is vocal mimicry or vocal learning.\u00a0 Surprisingly enough our closest relatives (apes and monkeys) lack this ability. \u00a0While they can certainly learn from one another, they don\u2019t mimic each other\u2019s sounds.\u00a0 And Schachner found no videos showing they could inherently move to a beat.<\/p>\n<p>I doubt Dr. Patel ever thought that YouTube, besides being entertaining, would prove that a bird\u2019s variety of movements would indicate a type of cerebral flexibility that suggests his <a href=\"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2019\/07\/study-of-snowball-the-cockatoo-suggests-humans-arent-the-only-ones-who-can-dance\/\">creative choreography is not simply<\/a> \u201ca brainstem reflex to sound.\u00a0 [But] actually a complex cognitive act that involves choosing among different types of possible movement options. It\u2019s exactly how we think of human dancing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As always, the fun part of science is finding answers.\u00a0 So now, thanks to Patel\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cell.com\/current-biology\/fulltext\/S0960-9822(19)30604-9\">new paper<\/a>, we learned we are not the only ones dancing to the beat: <strong><em>\u201cSpontaneity and diversity of movement to music are not uniquely human.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>And Snowball, who is only 25 years old, could be providing answers for another half-century since Cockatoos in captivity can live to be about 75.<\/p>\n<p>I can&#8217;t help but wonder what Freddie Mercury would think if he knew that a cockatoo dancing to his signature song got over 8 MILLION clicks.\u00a0 So let&#8217;s let Snowball dance his way out to Queen&#8217;s <em>&#8220;Another One Bites the Dust&#8221;<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Snowball (TM) - Another One Bites The Dust\" width=\"695\" height=\"521\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/cJOZp2ZftCw?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Huge Hat Tip to Mitch, who inspired this post! Mitch was kind enough to recently share a delightful video titled &#8220;Birds Can Dance!&#8221; Despite my hearing deficit, I thought it was very cool!\u00a0 Although it was the creative and complex editing that made them look like they were dancing, it was very entertaining. &nbsp; But <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2021\/07\/23\/friday-fun-can-birds-really-dance\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[4463,4459,4464,4462,4465,4466,4461],"class_list":["post-44550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-alex","tag-dance","tag-parrot","tag-patel","tag-schachner","tag-schulz","tag-snowball","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44550\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}