Does any other animal do that?
My cats and dogs don’t seem to even hear it
Are you sure you have seen birds dance to music? Not a rhetorical question, I’m not entirely sure.
What I do know is that I have seen birds that would bob along with their owner’s body or hand movements.
And I’ve seen a lot of birds bobbing along on camera seemingly in time to music but where you can’t see what the owner is doing behind the camera.
Birds dancing in time to music where there is provably no other stimulus I don’t know about. Could exist, but I’m not sure.
Wow. That makes a lot of sense
Youtube videos don’t count. Thanks
Yes, such behavior exists, although it was scientifically demonstrated fairly recently. The first non-human animal conclusively shown to synchronize its movements to music was the cockatoo Snowball, which was studied at the California Neurosciences Institute in 2008. The study ruled out the possibility that the bird was merely responding to nearby humans (the Clever Hans effect). I think several other birds have been shown to have a similar ability since then.
Awesome so it’s not all bullshit.
Still only birds though, right? No chimps or apes? (I know chimps and we are apes)
Interesting, thanks
Anybody have any clue why it would be birds and not apes? Dolphins? LOL
Just a guess, but some birds do at least use music. For mating, claiming territories, just because they like to? It doesn’t seem a huge leap to go from producing song to moving your body while you are making music
Also makes sense! Thank you
Recently read a book of essays about birds - Birdology/Sy Montogomery (somewhat mediocre overall). One essay was about this, claimed it was not “Clever Hans” effect, and that only birds did it.
We know for sure some apes move to music. I would be very surprised if other apes like chimps for example don’t. How much opportunity or effort has there been to document it?
Here: first hit googling:
My opinion, that chimp is dancing, and probably better than me.
This elephant sure looks like he is dancing:
There are plenty of videos of different animals responding to music, maybe not dancing. Plenty of animals display rythmic, ritualistic movement behaviors, as well plenty making sounds that are to me, if not music, so close the distinction is meaningless. Maybe not the two combined so often.
I don’t trust any experiment with captive animals. Bears can be trained to dance in response to music. I don’t recommend looking up the method used if you are the least bit squeamish about animal cruelty.
My cat sits and watches me whenever I practice on guitar. She seems interested.
I didn’t watch the whole 7 minutes, but if you mean the actions around 0:40, that is clearly not what I would call dancing. The chimp is possibly responding to the music, but is not moving in synchrony with the rhythm.
That is just ridiculous. Are you gaslighting? He / she is swaying back and forth and clapping in rythm with the music.
I think the phenomenon you describe is called “entrainment”.
If I recall correctly, there was a parrot in the Guinness Book of World Records that had the most dance moves, and research was done on the extent to which the dancing was due to human interaction.
ETA:
https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/587385-most-dance-moves-by-a-bird
A sulphur-crested cockatoo (Cacatua galerita eleonora ) named Snowball[…]
[R]esearch conducted in 2009 and in a follow-up study published in Current Biology on 8 July 2019 suggests that there’s nothing random about the “shapes” that Snowball throws to popular music […] the researchers identified 14 distinct “dance movements”, including head banging, head shaking and foot lifting.
[…] While rhythmic synchronization has been documented in other species, including California sea lions (Zalophus californianus ) and Asian elephants (Elephas maximus ), to date parrots have demonstrated the most complex and diverse ability to “keep the beat” and move to music (i.e., dance).
The actual 2019 study:
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(19)30604-9
~Max
Okay that was maybe a bit strong. Maybe its later in the video, I didn’t look at the time stamp. That chimp is dancing.
I think proper scientific analysis and study is crucial, but I think a lot of people use scepticism an an excuse to deny that animals may share many qualities and experiences with humans.
Well it’s hard to say because the drummer is clearly adjusting his rhythm to match the movements of the chimp at some points. Using recorded music would be better.
I’m not an expert by any means but I’ve seen some interviews with animal trainers over the years and some things that I believe they’ve discussed regularly are that:
- Often there’s particular movement patterns/activities/etc. that a particular individual is more inclined to learn and perform.
- Consequently, the trainers aren’t just “training” the animals, they’re also sorting through litters to find the ones who are more trainable, in general, or at least happen upon some strange behavior that might be useful for at least one particular performance.
- And then, when contacted to provide performances for a show, they look through their script to understand what is needed and choose the animals that will be easiest to use to achieve particular acts.
All of which implies that, when you see an impressive dance performance by an animal, they did have some predilection for that activity at least greater than most others within their species.
Granted, that talent might be in following the trainer’s rhythmic beat, but that’s probably on the path to caring about music and could probably be bred for.