Casper the cockatoo dances to SexyBack, revealing parrots' beat sense

A seven-second burst from Casper the Cockatoo does more than land a laugh. As SexyBack plays, Casper snaps into headbanging, a quick spin, wings flared wide, and a swagger that looks almost choreographed. The clip is short, but it captures something cockatoo keepers know well: this species does not just perch and preen. It performs.

That matters because the behavior sits on top of a real biology lesson. In a 2019 report on Snowball the cockatoo, researchers showed the bird could move in time with Queen’s Another One Bites the Dust, even after they changed the tempo of his favorite tracks. Snowball had become an internet sensation in 2009, and by then researchers had documented 14 different dance moves in the bird’s repertoire.

The evidence grew much larger in 2025. A PLOS One study published on August 6 drew on 45 online videos spanning five cockatoo species, then added a playback experiment with zoo-housed male-female pairs of three species. The team identified 30 distinct dance movements, including 17 newly described in the paper, and 17 rare movements seen in only one bird. In the playback trial, every bird danced in every treatment, whether the birds heard music, silence, or a podcast, and audio condition did not significantly change the chance of dancing.

The broader picture is even bigger than Casper’s few flashy seconds. A summary of the work said at least 10 of the 21 cockatoo species dance, half of the videoed birds showed downward bobbing, and the most common moves included bobbing up and down, headbanging, and side-to-side motion. Taken together, the studies suggest that cockatoo dancing is not random silliness. It may reflect imitation, vocal learning, social engagement, and other cognitive processes tied to welfare.

That is the practical takeaway for anyone living with a cockatoo like Casper. A bird that commits to a pop-song routine is showing rhythm mimicry and a strong bid for interaction, but the same display also points to a species that needs daily enrichment, social contact, and safe outlets for high energy. Read in context, the dance looks like healthy engagement first and entertainment second, which is exactly why a cockatoo’s best performance starts long before the music comes on.