Happy Thought for 1 August 2025

Have a Happy Thought: 

Those of us older than a decade or so have gone through multiple formats of “saving” information.

From physical documents, to reels of tape (be kind, rewind!), CDs and DVDs, flash drives (aka thumb drives aka USB drives aka aka aka), and, of course, “the cloud”.



Now, I present to you the newest* method of recording information... a starling.

Image: from gardenbirdwatching.com


Basically, a guy who is “in to music and science” decided to test out his theory of converting an image into a soundwave, and then teaching that soundwave to a starling.

His FIRST ATTEMPT was successful! And while this is fairly slow at an optimistic 2Mbps (a USB can transfer from betweeen 12Mbps to 12,000Mbps), the fact that this theory has passed the first test is quite amazing.

You can watch the ~30-minute video explaining the starling-storage system here, including a great explainer as to why starlings are so good at making so many noises:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCQCP-5g5bo



It does make you wonder what data transfer rate could be achieved by a lyrebird! (The chainsaw!!!)

Image: Superb Lyrebird (Menura novaehollandiae), by David Cook




*Does this whole thing make anyone else think of jabberjays? No? Just Me?

For those that think I’m just mis-spelling “mockingbird” or “bluejay”, I share this explainer:

In Suzanne Collins’ book, The Hunger Games, the ... evil government of Panem first created the jabberjay to spy on enemies and rebels of the Capitol, as they could memorize and repeat entire human conversations. ... Male jabberjays bred with female mockingbirds, giving birth to the mockingjay, which could repeat both human melodies and birdsong.

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