Snowball (Cockatoo)

Snowball (born c. 1996) is a male Eleonora Cockatoo, noted as being the first non-human animal conclusively demonstrated to be capable of synchronizing the movements of his body to to a musical beat (i.e. dancing).

Background

Snowball's abilities first became apparent after being acquired from a bird show at the age of six by his previous owner. He was observed bobbing his head in time to the Backstreet Boys song, Everybody (Backstreet's Back). The owner and his children encouraged this behavior and observed Snowball developing rhythmic foot-lifting gestures, perhaps in imitation of his human companions' arm-lifting gestures.

In August 2007, Snowball was relinquished by his previous owner to the [http://www.birdloversonly.org/ Bird Lovers Only] bird shelter of Schererville, Indiana. Shelter owner Irena Schulz was informed of the Cockatoo's unusual ability and, after confirming this behavior at first hand, uploaded a video of Snowball's dancing, swaying, and head bobbing to her website. Some time later, someone uploaded the video to YouTube. The video became something of an internet phenomenon, with over 200,000 views in one week and was featured on the television programs Inside Edition and The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet. [cite web |url=http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,22612736-5012895,00.html |title=Snowball, dancing cockatoo |accessdate=2008-09-20 |author=Rolfe, John |date=2007-10-19 |publisher=The Daily Telegraph]

Between January and May 2008, research led by Dr. Aniruddh D. Patel of the Neurosciences Institute, La Jolla was carried out to determine whether or not Snowball was, in fact truly synchronizing his body movements to the music (as opposed to simply mimicking or responding to visual clues from humans present in the room at the same time). Snowball's favorite piece of music was played to him at several different tempos and his reactions recorded on video for later analysis. The results, published in the paper "Investigating the human-specificity of synchronization to music" showed that Snowball was capable of spontaneously dancing to human music and also that he could adjust his movements to match the tempo of the music (albeit to a limited extent), a behavior previously thought only to occur in humans. [cite web |url=http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080814/news_1c14bird.html |title=Snowball's chance |accessdate=2008-09-21 |author=Loberstein, Adam |date=2008-09-14 |publisher=The San Diego Union-Tribune]

Notes

References

*Citation
last1 =Patel
first1 =Aniruddh D.
last2 =Iversen
first2 =John R.
last3 =Bregman
first3 =Micah R.
last4 =Schulz
first4 =Irena
last5 =Schulz
first5 =Charles
publication-date =2008-08
title =Investigating the human-specificity of synchronization to music
periodical =Proceedings of the 10th Intl. Conf. on Music Perception and Cognition
series =
publication-place =Adelaide
place =
publisher =Causal Productions
volume =
issue =
pages =
url =http://vesicle.nsi.edu/users/patel/Patel_Iversen_Bregman_Schulz_Schulz_ICMPC10_in_press.pdf
issn =
doi =
oclc =
accessdate =2008-09-20

ee also

*Bird intelligence

External Links

*YouTube|N7IZmRnAo6s|Snowball - Our Dancing Cockatoo
* [http://www.birdloversonly.org/blsnowball.shtml Snowball at birdloversonly.org]
* [http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080625/full/news.2008.914.html Birds that boogie] at nature.com (requires subscription)