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Yes, you can store data on a bird — enthusiast converts PNG to bird-shaped waveform, teaches young starling to recall file at up to 2MB/s (www.tomshardware.com)

submitted 1 month ago by gedaliyah@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

139 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

(page 2) 50 comments

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[–] orenj@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

How useful would this have been back at the dawn of computation, I wonder?

[–] aBundleOfFerrets@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 month ago

They didn’t have ultrasonic microphones at the dawn of computation

[–] Jankatarch@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Pigeon guided missile but instead of pigeon it's a parrot and sings relevant source code in hex and an interpeter assembles it.

(I hate the last 4 words that sentence I made.)

[–] dsilverz@calckey.world 4 points 1 month ago

@gedaliyah@lemmy.world

In order to transmit/receive data during the night, a different carrier and modulation should be used: owls and a hoot-based Morse code (e.g. "ho-ho-ho-ho hooo-hooo-hooo hooo-hooo-hooo hooo" safely conveys "hoot" through the night skies).

[–] Goretantath@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago (3 children)

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

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[–] crystalmerchant@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

B I R D S A R E N T R E A L

[–] Cort@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago

Yep, obviously a government funded drone if it only has 2Mb uplink

[–] altphoto@lemmy.today 3 points 1 month ago

I got the error correction baseball bat!

[–] Joeyowlhouse@lemmy.wtf 2 points 1 month ago

I heard the Falcon service is the fastest.

[–] FarraigePlaisteach@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I would have understood this text quicker if the picture wasn’t of a bird.

Edit: wow, this is really amazing! You can jump to 17:40 to see the comparison, but it’s worth watching more of it.

[–] axEl7fB5@lemmy.cafe 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Make it an account on Twitter (I refuse to call that thing X)

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