White caches seem to have a natural propensity to dance
Andrew Angelov / Alamy
The whim, the side side and the roller of the body are some of the 30 dance movements used by the cockato-caps.
Cacatoos have taken online projectors from the snowball, a sulfur crest cockatoo (Cacatua Galevvo), became a feeling of dance on the Internet in 2009. Then, in 2019, Aniruddh Patel at Tofts University in Massachusetts and his colleagues showed that Snowball had invented 14 different movements and even combined some of them.
To study how common such behavior is, Natasha Lubke at Charles Sturt University in Australia and her colleagues have analyzed 45 videos published on the social networks of dancing cockatoes. They included five different species: the sulfide, white crest (Cacatua Soleil), crossed salmon (Cacatua Moluccensis), Tanimbar Corellas (Cacatuana GUFFINIANA) and small corrects (Bloody Cacatua).
The team identified 30 distinct dance movements each carried out by at least two birds, 17 of which had not been scientifically described. The closely linked species did not seem to be strutted in a more similar way.
Lubke and his colleagues also studied dance in two sulfide-clipples, two pink cockatoes (Lophochroa Leadbeateri) and two galahs (EOLOPHUS ROSICAPILLA) at the Wagga Wagga & Aviary zoo in Australia.
They played The Birds a House Music Track – The Nights by Avicii – a financial podcast entitled She’s on the Money or White Noise, and found that the birds have made dance movements, that the music was played.
Cacatoos did not seem to be bops either because they imitated people. “We don’t really know why they dance, but they could simply show behavior because they play and the game is self-reversed,” explains Lubke.
Many dance movements are similar to the demonstrations of bridal parade of wild parrots, which suggests that their dance capacities have been from the nuptial parade behavior, explains Lubke.
Based on video evidence, she and her colleagues conclude that dance behavior is present in at least 10 of the 21 species of cacato-cacato-cacravored.
“Snowball has developed its movements without any formal training in dance, but it was not known whether the dance movements of a parrot are largely determined by its genetic composition. The new study shows that kinship between species does not predict how the dance movements of different parrots are”, explains Patel, which was not involved in the new study. “These results are exciting because they demonstrate that flexible and creative dance towards music is not only human.”
But what kind of cockatoo is the best dancer? “According to the zoo study, Major Mitchell [pink] Cacatos certainly seemed to be danced a little more and were more committed than the other species, ”explains Lubke.
She says that additional research could determine if birds like to dance and if they are encouraging, this could improve the well-being of cockatrosses.
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