From Queen’s Brian May to Professor Brian Cox, some of the world’s greatest scientific minds are also musical.
Now a biologist from Brazil aims to join such esteemed names – with a funky tune about kangaroos.
Dr Weliton Menário Costa, a kangaroo expert at Australian National University in Canberra, has won a competition to convey his PhD through song and dance.
His new song ‘Kangaroo Time (Club Edit)’ has racked up over 7,000 listens on Spotify and is apparently already a hit in nightclubs down under.
The music video, meanwhile, stars Dr Costa and an array of exotic dancers doing their best to recreate the moves of the famous marsupial.
Dr Weliton Menário Costa is a PhD graduate from The Australian National University (ANU) and is described as one of the world’s leading researchers in kangaroo behaviour
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Extinct kangaroo species related to those alive today likely walked more like us
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‘Dance your PhD’ is an annual contest where researchers around the world are tasked with explaining their PhD in the simplest of terms through song and dance.
‘Winning this contest is the equivalent of winning Eurovision for me,’ said Dr Costa, who as a musical artist goes by the name WELI.
‘I think it’s extremely important that we celebrate diversity and creating a video explaining kangaroo personality was an excellent medium for me to do this.’
‘Kangaroo Time (Club Edit)’ song features bongos, strings and blasts of saxophone, all powered by a thumping high-tempo beat.
There are few lyrics, apart from a much-repeated phase by Dr Costa: ‘Hope you don’t mind some things I learnt from my kangaroo time.’
The video – filmed at Grasslands Nature Reserve in Canberra – has a range of dancers interpreting kangaroo movements and behaviours, from samba dancers, drag queens and ballet performers, as well as Dr Costa himself.
The dancers, unchoreographed, improvise their movements, responding to cues and interacting with each other like kangaroos would.
As you’d expect, it features rather a lot of hopping – which kangaroos do to cover vast distances in the search for food and water.
The new video features a range of dancers interpreting movements and behaviours of the kangaroo, including samba dancers, drag queens and ballet performers, not to mention Dr Costa himself
Ballet dancers Olivia Sutton and Jasmine Zolinger communicating Dr Costa’s research on Kangaroos through dance
Kangaroos are very socially aware and will adjust their behaviour based off cues from other roos, according to the expert
In one sequence, two dancers pretend to fight in the style of kangaroos and arch their backs, thought to be a trick roos use to keep their balance or listen more closely.
Perhaps less faithful to Australia’s national animal are other improvised movements, including salsa, classical ballet, twerking, and downright uncategorizable.
Originally from Brazil, Dr Costa relocated to Canberra to undertake a PhD in animal behaviour at the ANU Research School of Biology, which he finished in 2021.
Using a remote-controlled car, Dr Costa spent more than three years studying behavioural differences of a group of more than 300 wild eastern grey kangaroos in Wilsons Promontory National Park, Victoria.
‘We wanted to see how the roos react to the strange sight of an unfamiliar object – whether they’d hop away, stay put, or if they’d be curious enough to approach the car,’ he said.
‘Our experiments also involved walking directly towards a kangaroo to see how the animal would react.’
He found that kangaroos like to socialise in groups, but prefer smaller social circles, and will adjust their behaviour based off cues from other roos.
‘Think of it like a nightclub,’ the biologist explained.
‘You might see a guy sitting alone, looking quite shy, but then when his more outgoing friends come over to him, and they’re dancing, the shy guy behaves a bit more extroverted around them.’
Dr Costa’s research involved looking at how kangaroos react to a little remote-controlled car in their natural habitat
Also like humans, kangaroo personalities manifest early in life, such as confidence and sociability.
Mothers and their offspring have similar personalities, and so do siblings, which could be due to genetics, although roo personalities are thought to be influenced by their experiences too.
Kangaroos live in ‘fission-fusion’ societies, which means the size and composition of social groups change as time passes and animals move throughout the environment.
‘Their group composition changes every 9.3 minutes on average while they forage together,’ Dr Costa said.
‘Then members start to disperse and move into other groups – and an individual’s personality will influence who they assemble with.
‘Individuals that behave more similarly are more likely to be found in the same groups than individuals that behave more differently from each other.’
Dr Costa’s thesis, ‘Personality, Social Environment, and Maternal-Level Effects: Insights from a Wild Kangaroo Population’, can be viewed online.
He’s also due to release a new EP called ‘Yours Academically, Dr WELI, which also includes the songs ‘El Doctor’ and ‘Interlude (Yours Academically)’.
This post first appeared on Dailymail.co.uk
