How parrots swing like monkeys

- [Dominic] What do monkeys and parrots have in common?

(light music) This movement.

Like monkeys, parrots are also able to suspend their body weight, but from their beaks.

- There's nothing about this animal's anatomy that would make us think that it could do this form of locomotion.

- [Dominic] A team of researchers recorded four lovebirds navigating a small rod attached to a sensor in hopes of understanding the mechanics of this movement better.

- We know that your pet parrot at home probably does this all the time.

(laughing) We just are the first ones to actually, one, quantify it in a biomechanical way.

- [Dominic] Researchers call this movement beakiation.

- Beakiation really is, it's a little play on an existing locomotor mode, brachiation, which is frequently used by gibbons as a sort of very fast way of moving through the canopy.

- The bird will first attach onto the substrate with its beak.

We think they do a little bit of a test to make sure it's safe for them to reach and actually grab onto before they load their entire body weight on it.

Then they will actually let go of their hind limbs.

- [Dominic] Then the bird swings its body around and reattaches its hind limbs.

- We didn't train any of the parrots to do this.

All of them decided and chose to beakiate.

- [Dominic] But it's not clear how widespread this kind of movement is for birds in the wild.

- Suspensory locomotion in parrots is rare.

They don't use it all the time, right?

Why would you do that if you can fly?

But they do do it.

They really highlight the things we know and don't know about animals.

(light music continues)