Snowball, the cockatoo keeps the beat

The idea for a science experiment can come from an unusual place. After watching a YouTube video of a dancing bird named Snowball, a scientist in California decided to study the ability of animals to keep the beat. Bird lovers have long claimed that their pets have rhythm, and there are many videos of dancing birds online. Until now, scientists have suspected that humans are the only animals that can accurately keep rhythm with music. "Scientists have claimed that this capacity is uniquely human for several decades," says W. Tecumseh Fitch, a psychologist at the University of St. Andrews in Fife, Scotland.

Thanks to Snowball, that scientific opinion is changing. Snowball is a cockatoo, a kind of parrot, and his favourite song is "Everybody" by the Backstreet Boys. When he hears the song, he stomps his feet and sways his body with the tempo, or pace of the music, as though he is the only bird member of the boy band.

Aniruddh Patel is a neuroscientist, or a scientist who studies how the brain and the nervous system contribute to learning, seeing and other mental abilities. He works at the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego. After seeing Snowball's dance moves online, Patel visited the cockatoo at the bird rescue facility he's called home for two years. The scientist played "Everybody" for Snowball and also played versions of the song that were sped up or slowed down. Sometimes, Snowball danced too fast or too slowly. Often, when there was a change in tempo, Snowball adjusted his dancing to match the rhythm. In other experiments, scientists have observed the same abilities in pre-schoolchildren.Patel isn't the only scientist who has studied Snowball's moves. Adena Schachner, who studies psychology at Harvard University, also wanted to know more about the dancing bird. Schachner's team played different musical pieces for Snowball and a parrot named Alex, as well as eight human volunteers. The scientists observed that the birds and the humans kept time to the music with about the same accuracy.

Schachner and her team didn't stop with the birds. She and her colleagues watched thousands of YouTube videos of different animals moving to music.