Budgies: More Body Aware Than Humans

Who are you calling bird brain? It turns out that birds are more precise in navigating their bodies than humans are.

AsianScientist (Sep. 22, 2014) – Birds have been discovered to display superior judgement of their body width compared to humans. A University of Queensland (UQ) study, published in Frontiers in Zoology, has found that budgerigars can fly between gaps almost as narrow as their outstretched wingspan rather than taking evasive measures such as tucking in their wings.

UQ Queensland Brain Institute researcher Dr. Ingo Schiffner, who is the lead author of the study, said previous research showed humans unnecessarily turned their shoulders to pass through doorways narrower than 130 percent of their body width, whereas birds are far more precise.

“We were quite surprised by the birds’ accuracy—they can judge their wingspan within 106 percent of their width when it comes to flying through gaps,” Dr. Schiffner said.

“When you think about the cluttered environments they fly through, such as forests, they need to develop this level of accuracy. When they encounter a narrow gap, they either lift their wings up vertically or tuck them in completely, minimizing their width to that of their torso,” he added.

The researchers wanted to know precisely how birds judge gaps between obstacles before engaging in evasive maneuvers. In testing, budgies flew down corridors with variable widths between obstacles, and their flights were recorded with high-speed cameras for analysis.

Dr. Schiffner said the research, which was intended to help design autonomous aircraft navigation systems, would be applied to robotics work at the Queensland Brain Institute’s Neuroscience of Vision and Aerial Robotics laboratory.

“If we can understand how birds avoid obstacles, we might be able to develop algorithms for aircraft to avoid obstacles as well,” he said. “For instance, urban drones used for deliveries would need to fly through complex environments such as tight alleyways or between trees at the front of homes.

“For us, it isn’t the ability to tuck in wings that is of interest if we are talking about fixed-wing or rotor aircraft, but whether we can replicate what happens neurologically in birds as they navigate.”

To judge airspeed, budgies use optic flow—the rate visual cues pass by the eyes. They do not see three-dimensionally like humans, due to the lateral placement of their eyes and lack of binocular overlap. But using optic flow with just one camera could be very useful, suggests Dr. Schiffner, as it could keep the weight and size of automated aerial vehicles small and coompact.

The article can be found at: Schiffner et al. (2014) Minding the gap: In-flight body awareness in birds.

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Source: University of Queensland; Photo: Barry Lewis/Flickr/CC.
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