Head ganging cockatoo 14 dance2/24/2024 ![]() ![]() Soon after that study, Snowball's owner and an author on the new paper, Irena Schulz, noticed that Snowball was making movements to music she hadn't seen before. ![]() That was notable in part because dancing is a natural ability in humans that's absent in other primates. ![]() Patel's earlier study, also published in Current Biology (doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2009.03.038), confirmed that Snowball could move to the beat. "What's most interesting to us is the sheer diversity of his movements to music," says senior author Aniruddh Patel, a psychologist at Tufts University and Harvard University, noting that Snowball developed those moves-much richer than the head bobbing and foot lifting they'd studied before-without any training. It suggests that dancing to music isn't an arbitrary product of human culture but a response to music that arises when certain cognitive and neural capacities come together in animal brains, the researchers say. The finding is more than an entertaining novelty act. Despite a lack of dance training, new videos show that Snowball responds to music with diverse and spontaneous movements using various parts of his body. Now, researchers reporting in Current Biology on July 8 are back with new evidence that Snowball isn't limited in his dance moves. “Tim and I are committed for the long haul.A sulphur-crested cockatoo named Snowball garnered YouTube fame and headlines a decade ago for his uncanny ability to dance to the beat of the Backstreet Boys. The duo plans to continue researching birds of paradise in New Guinea for the foreseeable future, he adds. “Before we'd find one super intrepid backpacker every five years now there are caravans coming in, in small groups and birding quite intensively.” He hopes future development will leave the region intact. ![]() In the past decade or so, Scholes notes, responsible ecotourism has taken off, as the superb bird of paradise is “one of the holy grails of birding.” ( See 13 photos that capture the beauty of birds.) The team expects to find more birds of paradise species in New Guinea's biodiverse forests, which are so isolated and remote that human development has not encroached greatly on the birds' habitats. “Our evidence of how distinctive it is has cinched the deal,” he says. For instance, Vogelkop birds' feathery hoods have a different shape. Living in their forest base camps for up to months at a time, the team logged observed physical differences between greater superb and Vogelkop superb birds of paradise that confirmed they're separate. Their suspicions gained traction when, in 2016, a group of independent researchers found genetic variances in superb bird museum specimens, indicating the presence of distinct species.Īrmed with the new genetic find, Scholes and Laman went in search of field evidence. The song was “radically different than the one we were familiar with,” Scholes says. Scholes and Laman-a National Geographic explorer-first noticed the Vogelkop's unusual vocalizations in 2009. The birds also sing slightly different songs: While the superb makes a loud squawking noise, the Vogelkop has a more pleasant, tonal call. “It looks like somebody has wound up a child's toy and put it on a smooth floor,” says Scholes from Cornell's Lab of Ornithology. ( Read about moonwalking birds and other amazing avian courtships.) The Vogelkop, however, shuffles its feet in quick little motions, effectively gliding from side to side. Unauthorized use is prohibited.įor instance, during its dance, the greater superb deeply bends its knees and bounces. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |