Spontaneity and diversity of movement to music are not uniquely human

Spontaneous movement to music occurs in every human culture and is a foundation of dance [1]. This response to music is absent in most species (including monkeys), yet it occurs in parrots, perhaps because they (like humans, and unlike monkeys) are vocal learners whose brains contain strong auditory-motor connections, conferring sophisticated audiomotor processing abilities [2,3]. Previous research has shown that parrots can bob their heads or …