Helping lost birds (Ibises?) to find their way...

They (ibises) needed to be shown the route to where they used to go in winter.
Nice to find people have time for this sort of thing in a troubled world.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/science-en...o-get-home
Let me know if the BBC won't let you see the clip. The BBC used to be about building a better world.

Oh, that's cool. They have an aversion to flying, and a bad sense of direction, but why? Do you know?

(Aug 28, 2018 11:24 PM)confused2 Wrote: They (ibises) needed to be shown the route to where they used to go in winter.

After circa seven years of guiding them artificially, one apparently made the trip on its own back in 2011, before being shot dead the next year. In addition to the Alps being both an intimidating and directionally disorienting obstacle, their migratory pattern to a nature reserve in Tuscany is totally new and different from their ancient destinations. Plus, after four centuries of being gone, birds originating from zoos would be clueless about their historic routes, anyway. Though not as bad as the mental or instinctual gulf between domestic and wild turkeys.

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***It was an interesting study, which confirmed that birds benefit from flying in a V. But it didn’t address why or how they do so. That’s what Steven Portugalwanted to know.

First, he needed the right technology. His colleagues at the Royal Veterinary College, UK developed tiny data-loggers that are light enough to be carried by a flying bird and sensitive enough to record its position, speed and heading, several times a second.

The devices had one problem: they don’t emit any information. If you strap them to, say, a flock of geese, the birds would fly off into the distance taking some very expensive equipment with them. We needed a system where birds were actually migrating, rather than flying in a wind tunnel, but where we could get the data loggers back!” says Portugal.

Johannes Fritz had a solution. He works for an Austrian conservation organisation that is trying to save the northern bald ibis—a critically endangered species that makes vultures look handsome.

*** If another bird flies in either of these up-wash zones, it gets free lift. It can save energy by mooching off the air flow created by its flock-mate.

***Whatever the answer, it’s clear that this isn’t a skill the ibises are born with. When they first followed the microlight, they were all over the place. It took time for them to learn to fly in a V… and that adds one final surprise to the mix.

It was always assumed that V-formation flight was learned from the adult birds,” says Portugal. “But these guys are all the same age and they learned to fly from a human in a microlight. They learned [V-formation flying] from each other. It’s almost self-taught."

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/scien...ing-trick/

Mooching? Free airflow created by its flock-mate? Free lift?

And just think, evolutionary psychologists actually think that hypergamy is an inherent sex difference. I have an idea, C C. Maybe we could develop our own tiny data-loggers. We’d have to exclude anyone with a private jet, though. We wouldn’t want them flying off in the distance with our expensive equipment.  

Transactional sex was once driven by poverty. But now, increasingly, it's driven by vanity.

Vanity; definitely my favorite sin.

God, I loved that line. Hah-hah!

(Aug 29, 2018 01:13 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote: [...] And just think, evolutionary psychologists actually think that hypergamy is an inherent sex difference. I have an idea, C C. Maybe we could develop our own tiny data-loggers. We’d have to exclude anyone with a private jet, though. We wouldn’t want them flying off in the distance with our expensive equipment.  

Transactional sex was once driven by poverty. But now, increasingly, it's driven by vanity.

Like South Africa, Kenya is also one of those hot spots for dry sex, and its risks. (Make room, Thailand -- maybe the continent as a whole will someday become a zone for its own "specialty" in terms of attracting globe-trotters with money, not just locals.)

The practice can even tear condoms, not just vaginal and rectal tissue, though Kenya has a low or inconsistent usage in that regard to begin with. Plus, any client or exclusive "sponsor" routinely seeking abrasion and constriction probably likewise has a penis/brain which craves reaction to direct contact with the biochemical environment of a body cavity. (But OTOH, the arid "ambience" and lack of "precipitation" would seem to reduce the range of stimulants for the one-eyed hound sniffer's sensibilities in that regard.)

Contrary to headline below, they were talking about this issue 15+ years ago. Just indicates that it's as difficult a tradition to address or stamp out as would be getting Russians to give up vodka.

'Dry Sex' Is the African Sexual Health Issue No One’s Talking About
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/5gkep...king-about

Safer ways to achieve friction and tightness for the benefit of the male
https://www.health24.com/Sex/Safe-Sex/Wh...s-20150115

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Dry sex? I had never heard of such a thing. Weird! Yeah, pretty tough to change male values and behavior, that’s for sure.

Sorry, C2. I guess this wasn’t really supposed to be a 'birds and the bees' talk, was it?

(Aug 29, 2018 01:13 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote: And just think, evolutionary psychologists actually think that hypergamy is an inherent sex difference. I have an idea, C C. Maybe we could develop our own tiny data-loggers. We’d have to exclude anyone with a private jet, though. We wouldn’t want them flying off in the distance with our expensive equipment.  

Hypergamy is an inherent sex difference. Women are socioeconomically and educationally hypergamous while men only seek hypergamy in physical attractiveness. And asymmetry in reproductive investment means that women are always more hypergamous than men.
http://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2008-14626-002.pdf

Going back to birds for a moment...
Taking birds to a new place for the summer is just the start. They have to find their way back to their winter place and they have to know when to leave. Most migratory birds will have migrated several times before they need to do anything more than follow the leader. Homing pigeons can find their way home without knowing any sort of route so it's possible other birds can do this. This leaves the problem of when to head for the winter quarters and, at the end of winter, when to head for the summer quarters.
A thought is that in the course of 200 million years some mountain ranges might have sprung up that weren't there when the migration started. As creatures of habit, flying on a bearing between two points maybe they just flew higher as the mountains got higher.
I see the Ibis training team were worried that Ibises wouldn't know much about flying. A creature that has been flying for 200 million years and is covered in turbulence and pressure sensors probably knows more about flying than we will ever know.
And bees...
A feature of migration and monogamy is that when birds get lost they get lost in pairs - wherever they end up they have a chance of setting up a new breeding population.
Dry sex - I spit on such people.

I guess birds aren't as boring as I thought. I didn't know that there were poisonous birds. Did you know that, C2?

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/TjTOJ6zIbys

SS Wrote:I didn't know that there were poisonous birds. Did you know that, C2?

! - for some reason that escapes me right now I never thought of googling "poisonous birds".