[ad_1]
Many things make Snowball, a dancing cockatoo, a special bird.
In 2007, a Snowball video on YouTube at the Backstreet Boys went viral, which resulted in being invited to the show "The Late Show with David Letterman" and an appearance in an advertisement. for Taco Bell. The movements of the bird were so striking that in 2009, a team of neuroscientists declared that he and his relatives were the first nonhuman animals in the world capable of beating music.
And now, a new study done by these same researchers puts another feather in the cap of cockatoo crested with sulfur.
Their analysis of a new series of videos reveals that Snowball – who lives in a bird shelter in Indiana – not only has rhythm, but is also capable of creativity and spontaneity when he boogie . He uses various parts of his body to perform up to 14 different movements, none of which he was taught by humans or other birds, according to his owner.
The fact that Snowball could perform so many different moves was very surprising, said Aniruddh D. Patel, a cognitive science scientist at Tufts University and lead author of the study, published Monday in "Current Biology." "It helps to show that there is more complex cognitive capacity than we even imagined," he said.
While the internet is littered with animal videos "dancing", almost all the examples can be explained by the training. Bears and monkeys can be taught to dance at circuses, but Patel explained that such displays could not be considered true dance because they were based on operant conditioning. These animals learn that if they move in a certain way, they collect a reward or avoid punishment.
Snowball's performance is clearly different.
"Snowball developed this behavior spontaneously," said Patel. "He has never received a food reward for any of this. He never learned how to do dance steps.
Snowball, a crested cockatoos, shows some of its many movements. (Irena Schulz)
Snowball has been dancing since it was dropped off at Bird Lovers Only Rescue in Indiana in 2007. (The previous owner of the bird, who had grown up and could no longer care about Snowball , even left a copy of a Backstreet Boys album with the rest of the bird's stuff.) But the cockatoo's dance routine was pretty simple when Patel first studied it – mostly a few head and foot movements.
However, Patel stated that after the first experience, Snowra's new owner, Irena Schulz, contacted her and informed her that the bird was beginning to add new movements and combinations to her repertoire. In fact, he seemed to explore.
Thus, Patel and Schulz, who is also co-author of the two articles, have set up a new experience. This time, humans played Queen in "Another One Bites the Dust" and "Cyndi Lauper" in Girls "Wanna Just Have Fun" during the Snowball shoot. Each song was played three times, with no other input than the occasional attaboy of Schulz.
When a wave-like movement went through the head and body of the bird, it was referred to as "body roll". When Snowball lifted one leg and then shook his head from side to side, scientists classified it as a "vogue". To "synchronize head-to-toe", scientists learned that even though the bird had many movements that he liked to try, he usually only did it for three to four seconds at a time.
Even then, hardly any of the movements were what anyone would consider natural for a cockatoo. (The wild cockatoos, of course, do not have the advantage of having Freddie Mercury as a winger.)
"Of course, they make moves as part of their dating," said Patel. "But many of the movements we see in this study are things that no one has ever reported in nature in terms of cockatoos behavior."
Snowball is not the only parrot to have a successful dance video on the internet. After extensive research, scientists have found evidence of true dancing in nine other pet parakeet species, from green-winged macaws to black-headed lorises to black-masked lovebirds and Alexandrine parakeets.
The strange thing is that no other animal is known to do it – not even other primates, our closest relatives. So, why would humans have such a seemingly complex behavior with a group of birds? Patel and his colleagues think it might have something to do with the convergence of five traits that Snowball and his brothers all have.
"Voice learning is complex. It is possible to imitate non-vocal movements. There is a tendency to form long-term social bonds, because Snowball seems to do so as a social-bonding behavior, "said Patel. "There is the ability to learn complex sequences of actions and to be alert to communication movements."
Patel said that dolphins could have these same five traits. But as they live under water, dolphins' main social bonds are linked to their own species, even in captivity. Snowball and other dancing birds have made connections with humans.
Now that it is clear that Snowball is able to keep pace and sharpen his style, Patel and his team want to try to understand the motivations of the bird. The team analyzes data from another experiment in which she recorded Snowball under three conditions: listen to music by itself; listen to music with Schultz in the room; and listen to music while Schultz dances with him.
"We want to see if that matters in terms of how much he moves and how he moves," Patel said. "Does this social context play a role in his behavior?"
Although Snowball and his peers who prefer pop-pop may seem like a good time, Patel warns against attacking a bird to watch him cut a carpet. For starters, not all parrots can dance and many are extremely demanding animals.
"They have the personality of a child of 3 or 4 years old and they can live 50 years," Patel said. "They end up being dropped off at bird shelters because people can not handle the level of attention they need."
Read more:
This sea lion glides on Earth, Wind & Fire – and science shows that it has rhythm
These birds are the only other animals that beat to the rhythm
Dogs may have evolved into "puppy eyes" to pull our hearts
[ad_2]
Source link