Who is the best dancer in the animal kingdom? It’s time to find out as our favourite 8 species take centre stage and strut their stuff – do you agree with our choices?
Animals are amazingly energetic and sophisticated performers, often with an elegance and sense of rhythm to shame our own lumpen efforts. Perhaps that’s not surprising – we perform just for pleasure or to entertain others
Why do animals dance?
Dancing for animals can be a vital way to attract a mate , strengthen a relationship, fighting off a rival or communicating complex messages. Judging wildlife dancing is subjective – it’s not easy comparing a bee to a booby, but here are our favourite dancing animals
Best animal dancers
Verreaux’s sifaka
Signature dance: Line dance
Humans aren’t the only primate capable of fancy footwork In Tanzania, Jane Goodall observed chimpanzees performing a rain dance before a thunderstorm.
But the most charismatic dancer of any non-human primate has to be Verreaux’s sifaka. This gangly-limbed lemur lives in the spiny bush of southwest Madagascar, where it has developed a technique to crossing areas of open ground that – to our eyes – is a dance that veers from the balletic to the comical.
Bouncing along on spindly hind legs with great hopping side-steps, groups of sifakas pogo across the red, sandy earth. In truth, they look alternately like triple jumpers and prima ballerinas – arms extended for balance in clumsy demi-pliés.
Great crested grebe
Signature dance: Dance of the 7 weeds
When sensuous moves, on-the-money timing, acrobatic leaps and extravagant headgear aren’t enough, it’s time to break open the props cupboard and add an extra dimension.
The great crested grebe is a dancer that loves to add glamour to what nature’s already bestowed.
Come mating season, dark mascara and blusher are applied, with a show-stopping headdress to emphasise the drama.
With near-disdainful flicks of the head, the courting couple initially bob their beaks from side to side with a shake and a nod, completing the sequence with a touch of preening. The pas de deux continues as one extends its wings, the other diving, then rising
But the climax is yet to come: plunging beneath the surface, the pair dive to retrieve gifts – weeds and other nesting material, held proudly aloft as both birds stretch upwards, breasts pressed together.
It’s a touching show, demonstrating a commitment to the nuptial home that many humans might learn from.
Blue-footed booby
Signature dance: Flamenco
Few creatures could be less sensuous than the frankly absurd-looking booby. Its vacuous gaze and comedy footwear add to the impression of a circus clown – or, indeed, a whole Big Top of them, bobbing among the rocks of the Galápagos Islands.
So whether you find their courtship display touching, arousing or plain hilarious depends on whether you’re a female booby. Stomping from one flappy azure foot to the other, males shrug their shoulders and lift their tails to the sky in a clumsy approximation of the flamenco.
In fairness, it clearly works – eggs continue to appear, so at least some of the ladies must be won over…
Pacific rattle snake
Signature dance: Tango
Reptiles may be cold-blooded but if the stakes are high enough they can summon up a performance as firey as the hottest tango. Male snakes of many species compete for mating rights with a display thats part dance, part combat and 100 per c ent theatre
In North America during late summer, rival Pacific rattlesnakes can be seen squaring up. Each sparring pater as the front part of its body and weaves from side to side, wriggling and writhing as it tries to get into position to force its opponent to the ground. Well-matched combatants may sway in slow motion for an hour or more before the contest is finally decided.
The larger snake usually wins and mates with the local females, so selection pressure favours greater size.
But however prolonged the battle, the fighters usually escape without a scratch: venom never discharged.
Honeybee
Signature dance: Samba
For a dance with real meaning, look no further than your neighbourhood hive. A newly returned honeybee shimmies in a straight line, then circles first one way then the other, to repeat its hip-wiggling in the same direction again and again. So what’s it trying to say?
In short: this way to dinner. The series of high-frequency waggles and spins may be structured not just to look lively, but also to indicate the distance and direction to a new food source. It’s the language of dance – literally: some researchers assert that the use of arbitrary signals makes the waggle dance the only true non-human language in the animal kingdom.
Stoat
Signature dance: Breakdance
The stoat‘s so-called ‘dance of death’ is one of the strangest in the animal kingdom. Hurling itself around as if possessed by a demonic force, this slinky carnivore performs frenzied leaps, back-flips, full-body spins and forward rolls at dizzying speed in a display reminiscent of 1980s breakdancing.
It is often said that the stoat dances to hypnotise its prey so it can kill the entranced victim. But the frolics are more likely to be pure high jinks. If so, it is mere coincidence when a nearby rabbit attracts the stoat’s attention and ends up as dinner.
Another theory is that the hunter itself is the victim of a parasitic nematode worm causing abnormal bony growths that create pressure on its brain – in other words, the cavorting could be neurologically induced.
Either way, it’s a high-octane performance to remember.
White’s seahorse
Signature style: Waltz
Watch their famous courtship dance at facebook.com/watch
To enjoy the most sublime dancing in the ocean, you need to look beneath the waves.
White’s seahorse, a species unique to the coast of south-eastern Australia, carries out an intimate balletic courtship as a prelude to mating. The male and female – which, like other seahorses, maintain a lifelong monogamous pair bond – entwine their prehensile tails in a lengthy tryst, mirroring each other’s movements with gently fanning fins.
Before each dance the female undergoes a spectacular transformation, changing from a dowdy grey-brown fish to a sunflower-yellow beauty.
After several days of courting, she finally transfers her eggs to the male’s pouch, or marsupium.
Appropriately enough, this underwater ballet is frequently staged in Sydney Harbour, just a pirouette from the famous Sydney Opera House.
Red-crested crane
Capoeira
Some dances are so acrobatic that they almost appear to be fighting moves – and so it is with the mesmerising courtship dance of red crowned (or Japanese) cranes
These leggy beauties – 1.5m tall, blessed with a dramatic costume of snow cote feathers, black neck and red cap – reinforce their commitment to their long-term partners with and athletic routine, leaping high of the ground, flapping and wheeling around, bobbing their heads and squawking en masse, creating quite a racket amid the snowy landscapes of Hokkaido.
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And it’s not just the happy couple making a scene: entire locks often join in, indulging in a feather-ruffling commotion that matches the best big-budget ensemble show dance. Is it love? Or is it just exuberance? Either way, it’s an enthralling performance