Pigeon-brained birds can think in logarithms

Tags

biology, birds, mathematics

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9198-pigeonbrained-birds-can-think-in-logarithms.html

Pigeon Light by Ed Carpenter (Result of image search for ‘pigeon’ & ‘light’)

“Confused by logarithms? If so, you’ll be surprised to hear they come naturally to pigeons and possibly, subconsciously, to you.” [really?]

There are asymmetries in the way animals perceive numbers and time, and a recent experiment involving pigeons tapping levers in response to light flashes of differing lengths, showed that these birds underestimate the midpoint between two time intervals. This fits with a logarithmic model where pigeons might perceive time on a logarithmic scale on which higher values are increasingly compressed together.

Reminds me a bit of when my children were toddlers and counted “one, two, lots!”.

High-Tech Pictures Reveal How Hummingbirds Hover

Tags

birds, flight, hummingbirds

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&articleID=0002A840-B9B9-12B9-B9B983414B7F0000

Results from studies using digital particle imaging velocimitry (DPIV) indicate that hummingbirds get 25 percent of their lift capacity from the upstroke beating of their wings; the other 75 percent of the lift comes from each downstroke. Insects, in contrast, divide the work equally, getting 50 percent of the lift from each, and other types of birds rely solely on the downstrokes.

“What the hummingbird has done is take the body and most of the limitations of the bird,” Douglas Warrick of Oregon State University says, “but tweaked it a little and used some of the aerodynamic tricks of an insect to gain hovering ability.”