30 killer dance moves discovered in cockatoos
So far, parrots are the only known non-human animals that can dance to the rhythm of music.
Snowball the Eleonora cockatoo is a real superstar—both in the online world and in science. To date, 8.7 million people on YouTube have seen him dancing to the song ‘Another One Bites the Dust’ by Queen (I’ll share that video at the end of this post). He has his own Wikipedia page and holds the Guinness World Record for the most dance moves by a bird. His talent has also made him the protagonist of several scientific studies, such as this one featured on the front cover of Current Biology in 2009!
In a new study from August 20251, researchers showed that Snowball is not alone. They analyzed online videos of 45 dancing cockatoos (from 5 different species) and described 30 different dance moves in total—including foot lifting, sidestepping, and headbanging!
What’s special about this dancing is that cockatoos don’t just move randomly to the music. Instead, they adjust their movements to the tempo of the song, dancing in rhythm with the beat—a behavior no other non-human animal has ever been observed to do.
In the wild, cockatoos perform dance behavior as part of their courtship display—sometimes in sync with their calls. The researchers think that birds in captivity, in the absence of potential mates, may redirect their instinctive courtship behavior to their human owners!
But do they actually need music to dance? In a second part of their study, the researchers wanted to test whether music triggers dance behavior in cockatoos. To do so, they tested 6 birds (from 3 different species) at the Wagga Wagga Zoo in New South Wales, Australia. The researchers played either music, a podcast, or no audio at all to the birds and recorded their movements. And guess what? All six birds showed dance moves—in all three settings! Music did not trigger dancing more than the podcast or silence.
Why is that? Well, the birds in the zoo had never been exposed to music before and therefore had never been encouraged to dance to songs—unlike pet birds such as Snowball. However, it might also be that, as the authors write in their paper, “the choice of song may not have been appropriate.” Who knows, maybe the zoo cockatoos didn’t enjoy “The Nights” by Avicii? Perhaps the researchers should have played Queen instead…
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Have a wonderful rest of the week! All the best,
PS: As promised, here is the video of Snowball dancing to ‘Another One Bites the Dust.’ Enjoy!
This video just made my day. What an amazing bird. Thank you for sharing the dance show!
There is a very popular umbrella cockatoo on IG who I’m convinced isn’t AI. That your studies show that there are 30 dance moves that parrots can do, gives me hope.