This Bird's Got the Beat: Snowball and the Backstreet Boys

"Birds show off their dance moves"
BBC Science (April 30, 2009)

"Snowball dances in time to his favourite Backstreet Boys song played at three different tempos"

"Some birds have a remarkable talent for dancing, two studies published in Current Biology suggest.

"Footage revealed that some parrots have a near-perfect sense of rhythm; swaying their bodies, bobbing their heads and tapping their feet in time to a beat...."

video 1:09 (footage shown on BBC, courtesy Current Biology: Patel, Iverson, Bergman, and Schulz)

When I first viewed the video, I assumed I was looking at a well-done bit of camera trickery - running a loop forward, backward, and forward again to simulate repetitive actions. Then, I noticed a plant in the background, either being jiggled - or, more likely, getting blown on by the room's ventilation system. The plant didn't loop with the bird.

"...Dr Aniruddh Patel, from The Neurosciences Institute in San Diego, said: 'We found out that the previous owner usually listened to easy listening music, but he did have this one album, and he noticed Snowball bobbing his head to the Backstreet Boys.'..."

The article is a good read - and, yes: the bird's got the beat.

Mostly, though: this BBC article comes with a fun, cute, video. Enjoy.

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Hats off to SiuilARuin, on BlogCatalog, for starting a discussion thread about this video:

• "Dancing Birds"
  BlogCatalog discussion thread (started May 1, 2009)