(Title stolen from Quirks and Quarks radio segment) Can animals (other than humans) move to a beat? Do those dancing dogs (1) (2) really feel the rhythm? As far as the dogs are concerned, probably not (and not without a ton of training). However two recent studies suggest that parrots and some other birds can. One bird, Snowball the cockatoo, can demonstrably shift his dancing rhythm as the tempo changes:
Dancing Snowball
Bird really Shaking his Tail Feather
The researchers theorize that the only animals other than people who can dance to a rhythm are animals with brain systems capable of vocal learning. One group, at Harvard University, searched thousands of YouTube videos (nice work if you can get it!) for dancing animals and found that only birds who could imitate sound seemed to have any rhythm at all. A few elephants show rhythm as well, and apparently elephants also have vocal mimicry ability. The researchers are interested to find out whether dolphins (with their high level of vocal mimicry skills) also possess rhythm.
So another “human-only” ability (after tool-making) may be about to fall to the wayside…
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Alayne says:
May 4, 2009 at 11:41 pm (UTC 0)
Damn, those birds are better dancers than I am!
Peter Cook says:
May 7, 2009 at 9:40 am (UTC 0)
I hear ya. But I’m damned if I could keep time with the meter of your words…