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If there's any one thing that really separates humans from most other animals, it's our ability to get funky. 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.
如果真有一件事情能將人類與其它大多數動物區分開來的話，那就是人類具有跳舞的能力。你什么時候看到過一頭獅子，或者一只長頸鹿，甚至是一個大猩猩在跳小雞舞或者滑步舞？然而有一種動物——鳥類能夠擁有自己的舞池。
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.
幾項研究表明，有些鸚鵡和鳳頭鸚鵡會合著音樂節拍搖頭晃腦，左右搖擺。在 YouTube 上搜索“跳舞鳥”，你就會親眼看到。
So why are birds rhythmically endowed and not, say, chimps, our closest animal relatives? Probably because birds, unlike chimps, but like people, can mimic 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.
為什么鳥類被賦予了韻律感，而與人類親緣最近的黑猩猩卻沒有？也許是因為鳥類能像人類一樣模仿聲音，而黑猩猩則不能。當一只鸚鵡粗聲模仿人們說話或者一個聲音效果時，會做兩件事：首先，處理聽到的聲音；其次，監測模仿時發出的聲音。
Something similar goes on when we dance—we hear the music, and also somehow coordinate 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 mimicry. 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.
人們跳舞的過程也類似——聽到音樂，然后以某種方式協調身體跟上節拍。實際上科學家們推測，人類通過模仿聲音而學習說話衍生出了一個副產品——跳舞的能力?；蛟S，跳舞是伴隨著聲音模仿一同進化的。無論如何，除了人類之外能跳舞的動物只有模仿聲音的鳥類，這聽起來很有趣。這表明模仿聲音和跳舞這兩個特征是有聯系的。
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