'Not a Human, but a Dancer'..more on Snowball, the Sulphur-crested Cockatoo

[Robin Hide <>]

Possible interest.

Robin

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/07/what-snowball-dancing-parrot-tells-us-about-dance/593428/?utm_source=Nature+Briefing&utm_campaign=901fd95ecc-briefing-dy-20190705_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c9dfd39373-901fd95ecc-43737501

 

“……These newly published observations cement the human-ness of Snowball’s dancing. His initial headbangs and foot-lifts are movements that parrots naturally make while walking or courting. But his newer set aren’t based on any standard, innate behaviors. He came up with them himself, and he uses them for different kinds of music. “This is what we would genuinely refer to as dance, both in the scientific community and in the dance profession,” says Nicola Clayton of the University of Cambridge, who studies bird cognition. “It’s amazing.”

“Snowball’s style is like any human who would go out regularly to a nightclub,” adds Erich Jarvis, a neuroscientist at Rockefeller University. “We rarely repeat the same moves on the same parts of the same song. We are more flexible than that.” (Both Jarvis and Clayton are dancers themselves, and both danced with Snowball at a 2009 science festival.)”