Parrots Can Dance 104
juuri sends in an NPR article about the consensus created among scientists that some birds actually dance to music. "The results of this study are reported in the journal Current Biology, along with another scientific paper inspired by YouTube videos of dancing animals. Adena Schachner is a graduate student in the psychology department of Harvard University. She says she was familiar with the idea that some people had made videos of birds supposedly dancing. ... She and her colleagues eventually analyzed more than 5,000 videos. 'Imagine watching YouTube eight hours a day for a month,' she says. 'That's pretty much what we did. It was amusing for perhaps the first couple of hours.'" juuri adds, "While this makes them somewhat unique in the animal world, as only three animals are now known to dance by verifiable proofs, what struck me more was that this was the first time YouTube had helped forge a new scientific understanding. Given the explosive growth of uploading videos and people watching them, what other new understandings and popular misconceptions will be proven or disproved due to this emerging media?"
Animism On the Dance Floor (Score:3, Insightful)
On behalf of the rest of the animal world:
"only three animals are now known to dance by verifiable proofs"
Including humans? They are animals you know.
The assertion is made due to tests designed and carried out by humans using criteria based on human standards. In species specific behavior, humans can't possibly know when those species are dancing according to their own standards, or for that matter when they're doing something they'd consider to be other than dancing but fits the human criteria as a false positive.
Another species might well classify most if not all of human dancing as pre-mating ritual, as do some humans. And why not both, escaping from species-specific standards? This would make mating ritual to be dance in thousands of species.
Of course, like many recent articles, they have to make YouTude into some sort of oracle with the material qualitatively different, in order to make it more relevant. It's not. It's just easier than collecting data on your own.
Re:The pictured Sun Conure (Score:5, Insightful)
You'd be amazed the degree to which dogs will plan, including practical jokes. (Speaking from 40 years as a pro dog trainer...) Anything a bright 5 year old child can conceive of, a dog can think up too. Favourites seem to be dunking the unsuspecting in any handy mud or water. I once had a Chesapeake who figured out that dumping people off rafts was a wonderful joke, resulting in lots of amusing screams... and he always waited until they were well out from shore before doing so!
As to parrots dancing, I doubt this comes as much of a surprise to most long-time owners of such birds. They are very observant and imitative, and it doesn't take much to get them responding to whatever they hear.
They also play nasty tricks... my sister's parrot hated her dog, and developed the following routine:
Parrot: Jaz, COME! :)
Jaz obediently comes to the parrot's cage.
Parrot: Jaz, SIT!
Jaz obediently sits.
Parrot: BAD DOG!
Jaz, familiar with his role in this comedy and apparently just indulging the parrot, wags his tail but otherwise ignores this.
As to animals' notion of music... I use big plastic barrels for doghouses. They are fairly resonant. Sometimes young dogs dig like madmen in them, but after a while I realised it wasn't just random futile digging -- they'd do various specific rhythms unlike what they'd do if digging a hole. Finally it occurred to me -- they are DRUMMING. They enjoy the noise for its own sake. I've also caught dogs dragging a stick along the fence to make noise, just like small kids will do.
What do you get if you offer a kindergarten a variety of "instruments"?? A wide variety of percussion and not much else. Dogs, having about the same congnitive facility as a 5 year old child, do much the same.
At a guess, parrots probably are about equivalent to a 2 year old... and what do most toddlers do as soon as they're steady on their feet? attempt SOME form of "dancing" whenever they hear music.
Re:Animism On the Dance Floor (Score:3, Insightful)
humans can't possibly know when those species are dancing according to their own standards, or for that matter when they're doing something they'd consider to be other than dancing but fits the human criteria as a false positive.
The word "dance" is a human word, it means whatever humans want it to. Thus it doesn't matter what another species "thinks" - if we say they are dancing, then they are dancing.