Cockatoo dancing behaviour analysed in Charles Sturt College examine

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What motivates captive birds to bounce remains to be unclear.

Professor Freire mentioned there have been three key takeaways from the brand new examine. The first is that dancing is extra widespread and customary in cockatoos than researchers beforehand thought.

“It seems to be something that’s quite commonly seen… we even saw it in all of these companion animals who weren’t used to music.”

The second is the number of actions displayed by the birds.

“The variety really impressed us,” Freire mentioned. “There’s a lot of different movements they do … it’s not just simple, or one movement … it’s really varied, which raises a lot of interesting questions about whether they’re being creative and their individual differences in behaviour.”

The third, and for Freire, probably the most main takeaway, is that taking part in music, and inspiring dancing, would possibly enrich high quality of life of those birds in captivity.

“When you look at them dancing, it’s difficult to try and explain it in any other way than they’re enjoying it. Enjoying, I know sounds anthropomorphic, but enjoyment is simply an emotion that is quite helpful in understanding how you maintain the behaviour, and the length of the dancing.

“And if that’s the case, then, of course, then that it might actually be a useful thing to play music to them in captivity, it might be for enriching their environment.”

David Kedward, from Sylvania in southern Sydney, has stored birds for the previous six years and has 15 cockatoos of his personal. He says his cockatoos dance commonly.

There seems to be a couple of triggers for his or her dancing behaviour, says Kedward.

“It depends on the individual. Some do it when they’re happy, some do it when they listen to music, some do it when they’re excited,” he mentioned.

Some species are extra inclined to have a boogie than others. Kedward has observed his sulphur-crested cockatoos, corellas, galahs and Major Mitchells are more likely to bounce than different species.

The two finest dancers in his cockatoo entourage are Biscuit, a sulphur-crested cockatoo, and Potato, a short-billed corella.

“They bob up and down, get off the ground and jump, and some of them like to headbang and side-step,” Kedward mentioned.

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