【英语时差8,16】随节奏舞蹈的时髦鸟儿

（单词翻译）

If there’s any one thing that really separates humans from most other animals, it’s our ability to get funky¹. When’s the last time you saw a lion, or a giraffe, or even a chimpanzee, do the Funky Chicken or the Electric Slide? But there is one other species that can hold its own on the dance floor – birds. A few studies have shown that some parrots and cockatoos can bob their heads and sway in time to music.Do a YouTube search for “dancing birds” and see for yourself. So why are birds rhythmically² endowed and not, say, chimps³, our closest animal relatives? Probably because birds, unlike chimps, but like people, can mimic⁴ sounds. When a parrot squawks out a human phrase or impersonates a sound effect, it’s doing two things: processing the sound it hears, and monitoring the sound it makes in imitation. Something similar goes on when we dance–we hear the music, and also somehow coordinate⁵ our bodies to move in time to it. In fact,scientists speculate that humans evolved the ability to dance as a by product of learning to speak by imitating sounds. Or maybe dancing evolved alongside sound mimicry⁶. In any case, it’s interesting that the only animals besides humans that can dance are birds that mimic sound. It suggests that the two traits are related.