This video is hilarious and also fascinating. We once thought that humans are the only animals to “lock in” (entrain) in order to dance to a beat. However, Snowball the cockatoo has proven us wrong. In research by neuroscientist Aniruddh Patel, Snowball moved accurately to the beat 9 out of 11 times- an anomaly that no other animal has demonstrated. In other words, no other animals dance spontaneously! The thing we share with parrots, in addition to being great dancers, is that we are vocal language learners. Patel postulates that “since vocal learning creates links between the hearing and movement centers of the brain”, this is what must be required for an animal to dance synchronously to the beat. If this is true, speech and movement may be more intertwined neurologically than ever thought before.
