Reading Pigeons’ Brains as They Fly
The News Review:
- Reading Pigeons’ Brains as They Fly
- Bird’s eye view: Pigeons are trained as fussy art critics in …
- Sanford’s Second Love After Cheating? Killing birds
- Homing Pigeons Get Neurologgers
Reading Pigeons’ Brains as They Fly
New York Times
How homing pigeons find their way back to a starting point is not completely known. Studies have shown that the birds variously use the position of the sun and the earth’s magnetic field as a compass and sense of smell and visual cues as navigation aids. But the use of visual cues has been difficult to study because if a bird flies over a landmark and doesn’t change its course it’s impossible to know whether the bird has not perceived the cue or is ignoring it. The researchers developed tiny neurologgers to record electrical activity in the pigeons’ brains as they flew. The birds also carried small global positioning system units to track position. By matching brain activity to location the researchers could determine the effect of flying over a landmark. The birds’ flights began over water a relatively featureless environment and then continued over land to a homing point.
Bird’s eye view: Pigeons are trained as fussy art critics in …
Daily Mail
They’re there to visit the National Gallery. Pigeons it seems can discriminate between art techniques and can even judge their quality. According to scientists given the incentive of food racing pigeons can be trained to study the colour pattern and texture of paintings and evaluate them like an art critic.
Sanford’s Second Love After Cheating? Killing birds
NewsBlaze
5 ounce doves filled with shot that has to be picked out anyone’s idea of a favorite meal. A recipe for “dove with mushrooms” calls for 16 dove breasts-hello-and doves grilled in barbeque sauce according to another recipe and wrapped in bacon and jalapenos all but disappear wrote a disappointed outdoors writer. How many have been bequeathed to bird boys (who didn’t want them either?) Even the mourning dove’s life span is controversial and a PR problem for dove hunters. Hunting sites give it as one year-read: not much of a life anyway-while the San Francisco Bay Bird bservatory records a mourning dove living 31 years and 4 months. f course it’s the other gun Sanford used on Father’s Day that has gotten him in trouble with three of the most influential women in the United States-his wife the former Jennifer Sullivan of Lake Forest Illinois and Gail Collins and Maureen Dowd of the New York Times. And now people are asking the usual ethics and judgment questions about Sanford: if a politician will cheat on his wife who won’t he cheat on? If a politician will lie about sex what won’t he lie about? If a politician will squander tax payer money on this what won’t he squander it on? Absent from the public discussion is if a politician gets a thrill out of killing-repeatedly for no reason and without a fight-what else is wrong with his mental health? Nor is anyone pointing out that the mourning dove used to be called the Carolina Turtledove and doesn’t leave its mate.
Related from Dmdreams: Digital media used increasingly to cheat in school
Homing Pigeons Get Neurologgers
UberGizmo
Vyssotski a research fellow at Zurich University’s Institute of Neuroinformatics wants to know how this is done by developing a device known as the neurologger. This simple device tips the scales at just two grams where it will hold an electroencephalograph (EEG) to record all electrical activity in that bird brain alongside the help of a fitted GPS system in order to find out what makes the homing pigeon tick. Results show that middle and high frequency brain waves correlate with the animal behavior better especially when the birds approached the coastline.
Written by admin on July 8th, 2009 with
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