Researchers at Harvard recently conducted an odd experiment in visual memory. They selected 21 Harvard undergrads and 21 6- to 8-year-old children, and pitted them all against an African grey parrot in an elaborate version of a shell game:
Tiny colored pom-poms were covered with cups and then shuffled, so participants had to track which object was under which cup. The experimenter then showed them a pom-pom that matched one of the same color hidden under one of the cups and asked them to point at the cup. (Griffin, of course, used his beak to point.) The participants were tested on tracking two, three, and four different-colored pom-poms. The position of the cups were swapped zero to four times for each of those combinations. Griffin and the students did 120 trials; the children did 36.
The game tests the brain’s ability to retain memory of items that are no longer in view, and then updating when faced with new information, like a change in location. This cognitive system is known as visual working memory and is the one of the foundations for intelligent behavior.
As the Harvard Gazette reports, Griffin the parrot kicked the all the little kids' asses, and "performed either as well as or slightly better" than the Harvard students in 12 of the 14 trial types.
Take from that what you will.
When a bird brain tops Harvard students on a test [Juan Siliezar / The Harvard Gazette] Read the rest
Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle. Read the rest
Walker, Louisiana police are on the lookout for an "aggressive chicken" that's been harassing customers of a bank. The bird is described as 18" tall and weighing 6-8 pounds. Apparently the chicken has been hassling people all week, chasing them and attempting to jump in vehicles. From
CNN:
Officers responded to the bank on Walker South Road after receiving a call around 4 p.m. Friday regarding the suspect, which "apparently anticipated the imminent arrival of law enforcement and fled on foot from the scene," Walker police said in the [Facebook] post.
image: Muhammad Mahdi Karim (GFDL)
Read the rest
This is a very funny short story, told in a crappy overly compressed GIF and some doodle overlays. It's brilliant. Wait for it. Read the rest
Don't let the Flat-Earthers find out that our world is just an unrendered level in a video game.
Image via NeedPix / Public Domain
Read the rest
This is a java sparrow that's learned to ride a tiny skateboard.
Image: YouTube Read the rest
The tiny skull, about the size of a thumbnail, trapped in amber may belong to the smallest dinosaur scientists have ever discovered. Paleontologist Lida Xing of the China University of Geosciences spotted the skull in a 99-million-year-old chunk of amber from northern Myanmar. From the New York Times:
[Xing, Chinese Academy of Sciences paleontologist Jingmai O’Connor, and their colleagues] called the bird Oculudentavis khaungraae — a name that comes from the Latin words for eye, teeth and bird. The dinosaur’s skull is only 14.25 millimeters, or a little more than half an inch, from its beak to the end of its skull. The animal had bulbous eyes that looked out from the sides of its head, rather than straight ahead like the eyes of an owl or a human.
“We were able to show that this skull is even smaller than that of a bee hummingbird, which is the smallest dinosaur of all time — also the smallest bird,” O’Connor said. “This is a tiny skull, and it’s just preserved absolutely pristinely"....
Most scientists now believe that birds are theropods, dinosaurs of a group that included tyrannosaurus and spinosaurus, but that birds were on their own evolutionary branch from a common ancestor. Paleontologists have long assumed that as birds evolved away from other dinosaurs, having teeth was a trait that was in the process of disappearing altogether. “But this specimen strongly shows that evolution’s really going in all different directions,” Dr. O’Connor said.
More at Nature: "Tiny bird fossil might be the world’s smallest dinosaur"
image: Lida Xing
Read the rest
It's downright majestic is what it is. Read the rest
How does an owl's tail help it fly? To better see the role of the tail in raptor aerodynamics, researchers at the UK's Royal Veterinary College recorded birds of prey flying through clouds of tiny helium bubbles. According to the science journal Nature, analyzing the swirling motion of the bubbles enabled the scientists to discover "a new way in which birds use their tail to provide lift and so reduce drag while gliding... Their findings could provide a new way to improve the efficiency of small gliding aircraft."
More: "High aerodynamic lift from the tail reduces drag in gliding raptors" (Journal of Experimental Biology)
Read the rest
With their massive wingspans and high speed, albatrosses fly across the seas in search of food. That's why marine ornithologist Henri Weimerskirch of the French National Center for Scientific Research calls the birds the “sentinels of the sea" and is using them to survey the ocean for illegal fishing boats. Apparently, the operators of these vessels frequently turn off their automatic identification system (AIS) that broadcasts who they are and their location. From Katherine J. Wu's article in Smithsonian:
(Weimerskirch) and his colleagues have outfitted nearly 200 albatrosses with tiny GPS trackers that detect radar emissions from suspicious ships, allowing the birds to transmit the locations of fishers in the midst of illicit acts...
The range of these signals isn’t big enough to be reliably picked up by stations on shore, keeping the ships’ movements mostly discreet. Radar can be detected within a few miles of the vessel itself, however—as long as something, or someone, can get close enough...
Over the course of six months, the team’s army of albatrosses surveyed over 20 million square miles of sea. Whenever the birds came within three or so miles of a boat, their trackers logged its coordinates, then beamed them via satellite to an online database that officials could access and cross-check with AIS data. Of the 353 fishing vessels detected, a whopping 28 percent had their AIS switched off—a finding that caught Weimerskirch totally off guard.
"Ocean sentinel albatrosses locate illegal vessels and provide the first estimate of the extent of nondeclared fishing" (PNAS)
image: "Wandering Albatross (Diomedea exulans) in flight, East of the Tasman Peninsula, Tasmania, Australia." Read the rest
In Pragadavaram village in India's state of Andhra Pradesh, a man was killed by a rooster during an illegal cockfight. The birds' owners tie razors to the animals' natural spurs and fight them to the death. From the New Zealand Herald:
As one of the organisers held the bird, preparing to release it into the arena, it struggled free and lashed out, inflicting a deep wound on the victim who stood nearby.
Cockfights were banned by the Indian Supreme Court as part of the 1960 Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act but the practice remains popular in some areas, especially as part of celebrations for Makar Sankranti, a Hindu festival day...
A dozen other injuries were reported from cockfights held during the celebrations.
image: detail of "Cockfight in London, c. 1808" (public domain)
Read the rest
A bird rescue group in Las Vegas says one of three hat-wearing pigeons which gained popularity on social media has died.
Lofty Hopes pigeon rescue of Las Vegas tweeted the sad news this past Sunday. Read the rest
Watching the Big Bear Bald Eagle Cam is really quite a thrill!
It's pointed at a nest near Big Bear Lake in the San Bernardino National Forest (Southern California) occupied by Jackie and Shadow, a bald eagle couple waiting for their two eaglets to arrive. One of their eggs was laid on January 8 and the other just on Saturday. Jackie sits on the eggs the most, typical for paired eagles because the females are bigger and heavier. They simply provide more warmth and protection. But Shadow is doing his share, feeding Jackie, fluffing the nest, and, as in the past years, sitting on the eggs for stints in the daytime hours when it's not as cold. The incubation period for eagle eggs is 35 days, so the first eaglet is expected to hatch around Valentine's Day. My friend Heather was the one who showed me the cam and told me to gird my loins because (spoiler alert!) for the last two years, "the second / smaller chick always dies." Arggggghhhhh!
The Friends of the Big Bear Valley are doing a bang-up job on Facebook of narrating the day-to-day activities of these majestic raptors.
screengrab via Big Bear Bald Eagle Cam Read the rest
Last week, we posted about pigeons wearing cowboy hats in the Las Vegas Valley. Pigeon rescue group Lofty Hopes reports that they've finally trapped one of the animals, named Cluck Norris. The hats appear to be glued on the pigeons' heads. Lofty Hopes are still seeking a pink-hatted bird they've nicknamed Coo-lamity Jane.
Nobody has yet identified the birdbrain who put the hats on the pigeons.
(8 News Now) Read the rest
In the Las Vegas Valley, some pigeons are wearing cowboy hats. While the chapeaus may seem cute on first glance, and pigeons are annoying anyway, it's unlikely they are purposely making a fashion statement. A "pigeon positive" animal rescue group called Lofty Hopes is now trying to catch the pigeons and safely remove their hats.
"Did they glue them? And what does that mean for them?” (Lofty Hopes head Mariah) Hillman told KVVU-TV. "Is it something that's going to impede their flight or attract predators?"
“We drove up and down here yesterday for a good two hours just handing out business cards to any location where I saw pigeons and people," Hillman said. "If you see these birds, just feed them until I get here. I'm only 3 miles away and I'll come trap them." Read the rest
Ornithologists have determined that white bellbirds of the northern Amazon have the loudest mating call of any bird. The male white bellbird sounds off to females as close as 13 feet away with a call that can reach 125 decibels at that range. That's louder than what you'd hear holding a chainsaw while not wearing earplugs. From Discover:
The mating call also comes with a strange performance. The males turn their back to the female, lower their tail and head, and puff up. “And then all of a sudden, boom,” Podos says — one note comes screeching out, and the bird flips around dramatically to sing the second tone directly into the female’s face. The researchers think this volume might damage the female’s hearing, but maybe it’s a sacrifice she is willing to make for the sake of a good mate...
Species from the Amazon are under intense sexual selection pressures, so it makes sense that two of the loudest birds on record are from the region. Also, the screaming piha (another very loud bird) and white bellbirds are fruit-eaters, and (study coauthor Jeff Podos of University of Massachusetts Amherst) thinks the wide beaks needed for choking down berries could also help project loud calls.
"Extremely loud mating songs at close range in white bellbirds" (Current Biology) Read the rest
Artist and animator Stephen Cunnane directed these wonderful videos to help artists animate bugs, birds, and other animals.
.embed-vimeo {text-align: center;
position: relative;
padding-bottom: 56.25%;
height: 0;
overflow: hidden;
max-width: 100%;}
.embed-vimeo iframe {position: absolute;
top: 0;
left: 0;
width: 100%;
height: 100%;}
Read the rest
.jpg){kind=link}