Credit:
Lubke et al., 2025, PLOS One/CC-BY 4.0
They also analyzed the behavior of six cockatoos from three species at Australia’s Wagga Wagga Zoo to test whether music would trigger similar dancing behavior in those birds. There were three “treatments”: playing the song “The Nights” by Avicii; not playing any music; and playing a podcast called “She’s on the Money” (the podcast had no music).
The results: Dancing behavior was present in 10 of the 21 known cockatoo species. The downward movement was the most common, observed in 50 percent of the birds, followed by the sidestep (43 percent), while movements involving just the wings were the most rare. Several birds also combined different moves in unique ways to develop their own individual style. Some species shared similar moves, but sulphur-crested cockatoos had three movements not shared by other species: the semi-circle low, semi-circle high with crest, and head-foot sync.
The CSU team was able to rule out the dancing as a form of stereotypic behavior, which is quite common in parrots. This would be voluntary movement patterns with no clear function or goal, performed repeatedly with little to no variation—feather plucking, screaming, or even self-mutilation. However, the cockatoos in the study exhibited considerable variation in their dance movements.
Prior studies have suggested that this kind of dancing behavior might be related to courtship displays, since there are similarities. Perhaps all those dancing online birds, in the absence of potential avian mates, are redirecting those impulses toward their human owners. Or perhaps it’s just their way of interacting with their owners. But the authors concluded that their study “somewhat refutes any role of the owners in eliciting dance behavior.”
These kinds of studies may provide insight into the complex cognitive processes in birds, per the authors. “The similarities with human dancing make it hard to argue against well-developed cognitive and emotional processes in parrots, and playing music to parrots may improve their welfare,” said co-author Rafael Freire (CSU). “Further research would be beneficial to determine if music can trigger dance in captive birds and serve as a form of environmental enrichment.”
PLoS ONE, 2025. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0328487 (About DOIs).