Thursday, April 30, 2009

Dancing Cockatoos! Story on NPR

Dancing is not so uniquely human, apparently. Check out the YouTube video of a sulfur-crested cockatoo named Snowball dancing to the Backstreet Boys. More than a pet trick, neurobiologist Aniruddh Patel explains the significance for understanding how the brain processes music. Tecumseh Fitch, an evolutionary biologist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, suggests that the findings open the way for new research on the origins of music. He asks the question, "what genes are turned on while a bird is dancing?" Read more (and see the video) at NPR.

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