The parrot rhythm videos all over youtube are funny, sort of, and interesting.
Probably our common origins in big-beat rhythm entrainment (though no idea why: possibly courtship display? some sort of social contagion? doesn’t look like aggressivity).
Interesting that it’s shown by the only other species that can imitate speech. Would they do it with a rhythmic visual stimulus alone?
Reminds me vaguely of the (vaguely repulsive) baby rhythm videos (which put me off partly because of the vulgar adult movements in the toddlers and partly because of the vulgar music)
I wonder if parrots also imitate movement?
(Maybe it’s just me, but something feels non-innocent in videos like these, something reminiscent of circus-display on-cue: the kind of music, the kind of movement, the kind of people. Maybe I’m just post-april-fools-day-pausal today… but I much prefer to see tenderness, empathy, tentativeness, and, yes, respect, toward animals, and especially captive ones. Ditto for babies.)