Scientists are studying the psychological influence of music through a dancing parrot named Snowball. The ground-breaking study could tell us more about animal behaviour and the instinctive nature of dance.
Snowball, the white cockatoo, has been an internet sensation for over a decade, with his first dancing video garnering over 6.2 million views in 2007.
Since then, Snowball has been expanding his dance repertoire and refining his choreography, so much so that this pirouetting parrot possesses 14 different dance moves.
The sulphur-crested parrot is fascinating scientists as this level of dance variation has never been recorded in any other species in the animal kingdom besides humans. That includes chimpanzees, the primates most genetically similar to us, who are thought to possess no dancing ability at all.
In the videos, the bird can be seen doing a number of special moves, including body rolls and side-steps to a number of classic ’80s hits, including ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.’
Fascinatingly, the researchers say Snowball’s acts appear to be instinctual, not motivated by hunger or courtship.
Writing in Current Biology, the researchers commented: “Snowball does not dance for food or in order to mate; instead, his dancing appears to be a social behaviour used to interact with human caregivers.”
It suggests that dancing to music isn’t an arbitrary product of human culture but a response to music when certain cognitive and neural capacities connect in animal brains.
This research comes a decade after Snowball dancing to ‘Everybody’ by the Backstreet Boys became a viral sensation. Watch that video below.
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