Animals and birds that dance

There are many beautiful dancers in Nature. Read on to know more about some of them.

I am sure you all love dancing, but did you know that many mammals, reptiles, birds and even insects dance with their partners?

Imagine travelling through a desert at night and seeing two Red Foxes waltzing in the moonlight. They stand face to face on their hind legs with their forelegs intertwined and sing to each other.

Once a friend wanted to clear a well that had been choked with stones, mud and wild plants. When the earth mover arrived to do the job, she saw two cobras swaying about with their long bodies intertwined. The work came to a halt. When the dance continued for over an hour, she got the machine operator to gently pick up the snakes along with surrounding soil and place them elsewhere so that they could continue to tango.

Birds are great songsters and spectacular dancers. Have you ever seen a pair of Black-winged kites swooping in the air? The male soars effortlessly upwards and may toss some food to his partner. The female, also on the wing, sometimes flips upside down to catch the morsel. The two then lock talons and tumble down together, letting go of their grip at the last instant before landing.

The tall Sarus Crane performs a charming courtship dance. The partners throw their red heads back and, with much trumpeting, spread their wings out, bow to and circle each other and prance and leap around like ballerinas.

The nuptial dance flight of ants, which takes place after the first rains, takes the cake. Worker ants of the same species but from two different colonies get the males and young queens ready for the great event. Often the males are impatient and want to fly off but the workers hold them off till the weather conditions are just right. Then the two sets of workers release the males and queens in synchronised fashion and the flash mob begins. A shimmering curtain of lacy wings is all one can see, as the partners meet and mate in the air. Once they descend, the male dies and the young queen tears off her wings and founds a new colony to lay her eggs.

Watch the fronds of the palm tree swaying gracefully in the wind or the leaves of the Peepul sashaying on a hot afternoon even when there is no hint of a breeze. Doesn’t this look like a dance too?