Dance Dance Dance!

So you think you can get out there at Cousin Kekiokolanee's wedding and really cut a mean rug, dancing up a storm like no one's seen since "Shake Down" was on TV. You can throw a Nae Nae til people holler No No and you can show the squares how the Triangle goes.

Well, all right. Stop by the cheese table on your way back to your seat, because it turns out that humans aren't the only ones who can dance to La Musique. Other species can dance. 

Here's the deal: Only species that can make or mimic sounds can groove to a beat. It's not just humans. But that does imply an evolutionary link between man and bird, for example.

A study led by Adena Schachner, (Harvard), Marc Hauser (Harvard), Irene Pepperberg (guess where!) and Timothy Brady, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (just to mix it up a little) studied the life and dance moves of Alex, a well-known African grey parrot, and Snowball, a sulphur-crested cockatoo whose dance moves made it famous on You Tube and every morning news show looking for a little relief from stories of mass shootings, kidnapped children, and politicians caught running out of motels with their pants in their hands.

Technically speaking, "Our analyses showed that these birds' movements were more lined up with the musical beat than we'd expect by chance," Schachner reported. "We found strong evidence that they were synchronizing with the beat, something that has not been seen before in other species."

"It had recently been theorized that vocal mimicry might be related to the ability to move to a beat," says Schachner. "The particular theory was that natural selection for vocal mimicry resulted in a brain mechanism that was also needed for moving to a beat. This theory made a really specific prediction: Only animals that can mimic sound should be able to keep a beat."

So, there's that. Before you can dance to the music, you have got to be in tune with the music. For instance, I can't dance, but that might be because I can't sing!

But Schachner, being a scientist and all, went and got data from a large variety of animals.  Guess where she went to get pictures of birds grooving to tuneage?

YouTube, of course!

Schachner, being seriously scientific, systematically searched the site for videos where animals were keeping time - animals such as parrots, and dogs and cats, even though they don't mimic humans.  

At least, not that we can see. They probably mock us endlessly when our backs are turned.