A music and science lover has revealed that some birds can store and retrieve digital data. Specifically, he converted a PNG sketch of a bird into an audio waveform, then tried to embed it in the song memory of a young starling, ready for later retrieval as an image. Benn Jordan made a video of this feat, sharing it on YouTube, and according to his calculations, the bird-based data transfer system could be capable of around 2 MB/s data speeds.

  • Goretantath@lemmy.world
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    17 days ago

    So a moving target of data you cant reliably recall and might get shot by someone looking for food. At least its neat though.

    • brsrklf@jlai.lu
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      17 days ago

      Average weight for a starling is less than 100g. The whole thing with head and feathers and bones and whatever. You’d have to be very hungry to hunt that. And I suspect if you shoot at it you’d pulverize it completely.

      Though cats are going to be a problem.

      • nyan@lemmy.cafe
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        17 days ago

        There will be a lot of cases where the data gets accidentally encapsulated (then fragmented due to incompatible protocols) in a cat.

    • AstralPath@lemmy.ca
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      17 days ago

      Who on earth is gonna shoot a starling for food?

      Have you seen starlings? They can fit in the palm of your hand.