Your genes will tell you if you can dance

Study: Some People Born to Dance

Professional dancers are born with at least two special genes that give them a leg up on the rest of us, according to a new study.

Recent research also has suggested that intelligence, athletic ability and musical talent are linked to our genes and brain hard-wiring.

With dancing added to the list, the evidence indicates that certain individuals are born with a predisposition to specific behaviors and talents, and that at least some of these qualities may represent evolved attributes.

“I think that dancing is an evolved trait,” said Richard Ebstein, who led the recent study, published in a recent Public Library of Science Genetics journal. “Animals have courtship dances and I think that human dancing represents the further development of a very ancient animal trait.”

Ebstein, a psychology professor at Hebrew University’s Scheinfeld Center for Genetic Studies, said, “Also the fact that dancing is universal and existed in all human societies, even those communities of man separated geographically by tens of thousands of years (native Australians, native Americans, Africans, Eurasians) attests to the very early origin of dance in our evolution as a species.”

article by Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News