What will those bird brains come up with next?

ElectricAye

Anyone know of a sensor that can see both light and static magnetic fields, but only at the same time?

blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2010/07/08/robins-can-literally-see-magnetic-fields-but-only-if-their-vision-is-sharp/

localroger

So the birds sense direction by having their vision naturally impaired in certain ways depending on which direction they're pointing. If they aren't seeing anything they can't tell whether their vision is impaired, and so they can't read direction.

To mimic this, take an electronic compass that has an analog output, and hook the output up to the focus control of an old CRT style television set. Depending on how blurry the image is you can tell which direction you're pointed -- but if you're seeing a black screen or static you can't.

It's interesting that only the right eye has the compass feature. One suspects that the advantage of having one eye with 24/7 unimpaired vision was more advantageous than having binocular compass vision LOL.

ElectricAye

localroger said...
....
It's interesting that only the right eye has the compass feature. One suspects that the advantage of having one eye with 24/7 unimpaired vision was more advantageous than having binocular compass vision LOL.

I guess Nature beat us to the Heads Up Display. The one-eyed arrangement kinda reminds me of stuff like this:

LoopyByteloose

Recently, the TV had coverage of scientists claiming that the honeybee population hive collapse was being caused by cellular phones interfering with their internal navigation. So one must wonder exactly how birds (or bees) seem magnetic fields.


We may arrive at a choice between producing food or keeping our cell phones and certain other gadgets. Weird, hun? Bird brains or bee brains need to do their own thing.

▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Ain't gadetry a wonderful thing?

aka G. Herzog [noparse][[/noparse] 黃鶴 ] in Taiwan