Snowball The Headbanging Cockatoo Spontaneously Creates New Dance Moves

Snowball, the internationally famous dancing sulfur-crested cockatoo, has been busily creating new dance moves to further impress scientists

by GrrlScientist for Forbes | @GrrlScientist

Snowball, the dancing eleonora sulphur-crested cockatoo (Cacatua galerita eleonora), creates his own new dance moves.
(Credit: Irena Schulz)

More than a decade ago, a medium sulfur-crested (eleonora) cockatoo, Cacatua galerita eleonora, named Snowball became an overnight sensation after he was spotted on YouTube energetically dancing to the beat of the Backstreet Boys’ “Everybody”. Another YouTube video from 2007 captured the 12-year-old cockatoo boogieing to Queen’s “Another One Bites The Dust.”

One of those millions of mesmerized viewers was musician and cognitive neuroscientist Aniruddh Patel, a Professor of Psychology at Tufts University, where he investigates how animals process music, as a way to study the evolution of musicality in people. Professor Patel was a Senior Fellow at the Neurosciences Institute a decade ago when he first saw and studied Snowball.

That study was notable in part because it showed that a cockatoo naturally does…