Mental time-travel in birds

Mental time-travel in birds

  10:22:00 AM    Science Lover

---

Certain types of birds may track army ant swarms using sophisticated memory and the ability to plan for the future.

White Whiskered Puff bird Credit: Glenn M Duggan FZS

Some tropical birds collect their prey at army ant raids, where massive swarms of ants sweep through the forest and drive out insects. The behaviour of interest is called bivouac checking; it allows these birds to track the cyclical raid activity of army ant colonies.

Army ants have regular alternating periods of high and low raiding activity, and birds visit the ants’ temporary nest sites (bivouacs) to determine which colonies are raiding on a given day.

The new findings published today in the journal Behavioural Ecology, suggest that bivouac checking allows birds to keep track of multiple army ant colonies, keeping account of which colonies are in periods of high-raiding activity while avoiding colonies with low-raiding activity.

Recent research has discovered that birds check army ant bivouacs at the end of the day, after they have fed at the raid. They may use the information about the army ant nest location the next day to find the ants again, thus accessing a past memory (the nest location) to fulfil a future need (bird will be hungry tomorrow), also known as ‘mental time-travel’.

Two of the authors of the study Corina Logan of the University of Cambridge, and Sean O’Donnell of the University of Washington, observed bivouac checking behaviour in Monteverde, Costa Rica.

Mental time-travel consists of two elements: the ability to remember past events and the ability to anticipate and plan for future events. It has traditionally been considered a quality unique to humans. However, ever since Nicola Clayton of the University of Cambridge discovered that scrub jays (a species of large-brained crow) can remember the past and plan for the future, there have been a suite of studies showing evidence of this ability in other species as well. We now know that corvids (birds in the crow family), some primates, and possibly rats have all shown the ability to remember the past and plan for the future.

Corina Logan, said: “We suspect that future planning could be involved in bivouac-checking bird behaviour because the birds were checking bivouacs when they were not hungry, a behaviour that does not make sense until the next morning upon return to the bivouac when the bird finds the ants raiding again and encounters its next meal – a delayed benefit.”

Until recently, it has been difficult to find model systems for studying mental time travel in an ecologically relevant way. “The fact that we might have happened on a whole new system for exploring these capacities is quite exciting,” added Corina Logan.

Provided by University of Cambridge



Recommend this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google +1

Read More

Flapping micro air vehicles inspired by swifts

Flapping micro air vehicles inspired by swifts

  3:50:00 PM    Science Lover

---

Scientists have designed a micro aircraft that will be able to flap, glide and hover like a bird.

This shows the wake of a swift in slow forward flight, the new design mimics these birds to improve MAV performance. Credit: William Thielicke

Researchers from the Biomimetics-Innovation-Centre in Germany have been inspired by birds to produce a new versatile design of Micro air vehicle (MAV) that combines flapping wings, which allow it to fly at slow speeds and hover, with the ability to glide, ensuring good quality images from any on-board camera.

"In birds, the combination of demanding tasks like take-off, travelling long distances, manoeuvring in confined areas and landing is daily practice," explains PhD researcher Mr. William Thielicke, who is presenting this work at the Society for Experimental Biology Annual Conference in Glasgow on the 2nd of July.

Micro air vehicles (MAVs) are small unmanned
aircraft, often used for rescue or reconnaissance
missions in areas where it would be dangerous
or impractical for humans to go. Credit: William
Thielicke

This innovative design was inspired by one bird in particular, the swift. "We know that swifts are very manoeuvrable and they can glide very efficiently. So we thought these birds would be a very good starting point for an energy efficient flapping-wing MAV," says Mr. Thielicke.

While fixed wing MAVs are energy efficient, their manoeuvrability is low. The new design would allow the flapping wing MAV to glide, improving energy efficiency and ensuring good images but when needed it can also slow its flight and manoeuvre in confined spaces.

"Although the models are not yet ready to be used, initial tests are positive and we hope that this design will combine the best of both worlds," says Mr. Thielicke.

Provided by Society for Experimental Biology

Read More

Auto-pilots need a birds-eye view

Auto-pilots need a birds-eye view

  8:54:00 PM    Science Lover

---

New research on how birds can fly so quickly and accurately through dense forests may lead to new developments in robotics and auto-pilots.

The pigeons were fitted with a tiny head-camera 
before they flew through the artificial forest. 
Credit: Talia Moore

Scientists from Harvard University trained pigeons to fly through an artificial forest with a tiny camera attached to their heads, literally giving a birds-eye view. "Attaching the camera to the bird as well as filming them from either side means we can reconstruct both what the bird sees and how it moves," says Dr. Huai-Ti Lin, a lead researcher for this work who has special insight into flying as he is a remote control airplane pilot himself.

The methods pigeons use to navigate through difficult environments could be used as a model for auto-pilot technology. Pigeons, with >300 degree panoramic vision, are well suited to this task because this wrap-round vision allows them to assess obstacles on either side. They can also stabilise their vision and switch rapidly between views using what is called a "head saccade", a small rapid movement of the head.

This image shows a pigeon, fitted with 
a camera, about to fly through the 
artificial forest that can be seen in 
the background. Credit: Talia Moore

This research is being presented at the Society for Experimental Biology annual conference in Glasgow on the 1st of July, 2011.

The researchers also showed that the birds have other skills that would be important for auto-piloted machines, for example they tend to choose the straightest routes. "This is a very efficient way of getting through the forest, because the birds have to do less turns and therefore use less energy but also because they reach the other side quicker," says Dr Lin. "Another interesting finding is that pigeons seems to exit the forest heading in exactly the same direction as when they entered, in spite of all the twist and turns they made in the forest."

When using a robot or an unmanned air-craft it would be invaluable to simply provide it with the coordinates of the destination without having to give it detailed information of all the obstacles it might meet on the way. "If we could develop the technology to follow the same methods as birds we could let the robot get on with it without giving it any more input," says Dr. Lin

Provided by Society for Experimental Biology

Read More

Turning chickens into dinosaurs!

Turning chickens into dinosaurs!

  9:17:00 AM    Science Lover

---

Palaeontologist Jack Horner is working on a project to create a ‘chickenosaur’ or a ‘dinochicken’, wherein scientists will reverse engineer certain genes in chickens, which have previously been found reported to be direct descendants of dinos

In an awe-inspiring new experiment, US palaeontologists are attempting “reverse evolution”, in which they would try to recreate a dinosaur by starting with a chicken embryo and then working backward to engineer a new “chickenosaurus” or “dinochicken”.

According to a report in Discovery News, such “reverse evolution” has been successfully performed in mice and flies, but those studies focused on re-introducing just a few bygone traits.

The dinochicken project, instead, aims to bring back multiple dinosaur characteristics – such as a tail, teeth and forearms – by changing the levels of regulatory proteins that have evolved to suppress these characteristics in birds.

“Birds are dinosaurs, so technically we’re making a dinosaur out of a dinosaur,” said palaeontologist and project leader Jack Horner of the Montana State University.

“The only reason we’re using chickens instead of some other bird is that the chicken genome has been mapped, and chickens have already been exhaustively studied,” he added.

Although the plan seems more like out of the movie Jurassic Park, Horner assured it is real and is already underway.

“A number of people in a number of different places are moving forward with the project slowly and carefully,” he said.

One such researcher is Hans Laarson of McGill University in Canada, who is now analysing the genes involved in tail development and researching ways of manipulating chicken embryos in order to “awaken the dinosaur within”.

“There is a lot of information stored in our genes that we don’t use – genes that determine features that evolution has suppressed, for various reasons,” said Kevin Padian, a professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley and a curator at the UC Museum of Paleontology.

“We now have the tools to ‘reverse-engineer’ some of those constraints and produce traits that look a bit more like those ancient features,” he added. “This tells us how genetics, development and evolution are related, so it’s tremendously important.”

NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT

According to Horner, there is no danger of the proposed dinochicken escaping and populating the world with dinosaurs, since only the chicken’s development - and not its genome - would have been affected.

So even if it did somehow escape and could mate, the result would just be a regular chicken, the palaeontologist said.

In any case, if a chicken embryo does not grow properly in the lab, or if it could not survive comfortably, then “we would never let it hatch”, Horner said.

When and if the chickenosaurus is created, he looks forward to bringing it out on a leash during lectures: “We’re always looking for novel ways to get the general public interested in science, and you have to admit, it would be better than a slide show for demonstrating evolution!”

Read More