If you watch the dazzling display of a male bird-of-paradise as he woos a potential mate, it is hard to call it anything but a dance. To make his moves even more visually appealing, the male sometimes moves debris out of the way, so that any curious female can see his display in all its resplendent beauty.
…… But even these isolated behaviours depend on several things at once. For instance, sound is processed by the auditory part of the brain, while movement involves the motor cortex. “I don’t know there is a set of necessary criteria that would isolate dance and include no other behaviours,” says Peter Cook of the New College of Florida in Sarasota, US.