Mother Nature is really amazing. She created so many interesting animals. Did you think before that only humans can dance? Here is a new evidence that some birds dance and move in rhythmic synchrony with a musical beat.

Researchers at Harvard University and the Neuroscience Institute (NSI) in La Jolla, California recently published their research in Current Biology in two separate articles. The scientists tried to proof that the ability to dance evolved as a by-product in animals that are capable of complex vocal learning and and converting a sound they have heard into an action to reproduce that sound. Not only humans, but parrots, elephants, dolphins and seals are also vocal learners.

The NSI researchers have been interested in finding evidence of music synchronization in animals for years. They discovered this video of a dancing yellow-crested cockatoo named Snowball on You Tube in 2007. With permission from the bird’s owner, they tested his skills in the lab. Snowball was tested on a song that he was familiar with at a variety of tempos (the Blackstreet Boys tune) and found that the bird changed the rate of his own dancing and adjusted his dance to the speed of the music.

The scientists at Harvard University tested Snowball and an African grey parrot named Alex with music neither bird had heard before at two different tempos. They found that both, Snowball and Alex spontaneously danced along with the music.

This research is a new step to get a bettrer understanding how the brain works behind dancing, which can lead to understanding movement disorders (like Parkinson’s) in humans, and why humans love to dance.

Source: www.popsci.com. www.youtube.com