# I've seen birds dance to music

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ive-seen-birds-dance-to-music/1014856>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [February 27, 2025, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ive-seen-birds-dance-to-music/1014856 "2025-02-27T04:23:50Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 16

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**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\
**Post date:** [March 1, 2025, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ive-seen-birds-dance-to-music/1014856/16 "2025-03-01T00:25:13Z")

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I think the phenomenon you describe is called “entrainment”.

> [@Star Wars Cantina theme played with a pencil](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-wars-cantina-theme-played-with-a-pencil/930647/2):
>
> There’s a thing in biomusicology called entrainment, it’s the unconscious synchronization to an external rhythm. So if you’re listening to music your [breaths might unconsciously synch to the beat](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16199412). Or you might write in synch with the melody.

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](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).

> **[Study of Snowball the cockatoo suggests humans aren't the only ones who can...](https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/07/study-of-snowball-the-cockatoo-suggests-humans-arent-the-only-ones-who-can-dance/)**
>
> Snowball the dancing cockatoo is the subject of a study by Radcliffe fellow and Tufts neuroscientist Ani Patel, who suggests the bird’s ability to move in time to music is connected to the way humans groove to a beat.

The actual 2019 study:

[https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(19)30604-9](https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(19)30604-9)

~Max

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