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Why birds do not fall while sleeping
- ndheebebe 2y ago> The only permanent bipeds of the animal kingdom alongside humans Kangaroos?
- teruakohatu 2y agoAlso the wallaby and there are some hopping rodents found around the world.
- aaron695 2y ago[dead]
- dhosek 2y agoKangaroos engage in quadrupedal (actually pentapedal—using their tail as well) locomotion at slow speeds.
- cryptoz 2y agoHumans also engage in quadrupedal locomotion, often at any speed and sometimes up stairs too. Also, I see both of my dogs standing on 2 legs every day, often walking short distances like that. According to wikipedia this only happens when they are trained to do it (?!) but we never trained them and they've been doing it since a few months old. Maybe I should update https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipedalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipedalism to indicate training may not be required for temporary bipedal behavior in some dogs.
- TheDong 2y ago> Maybe I should update https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipedalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipedalism to indicate training may not be required for temporary bipedal behavior in some dogs. That is against wikipedia's rules and thus will get reverted. You have to have a secondary source, not a primary source, and you're currently a primary source. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research
- swatcoder 2y agoIn practice, most trivia on the site follows the "no source at all" policy, including the claim the GP suggested they might revise. Whether it gets reverted essentially depends on whether someone would bother before it gets lost in the depths of the change history and how the GP chooses to respond if someone did.
- pnut 2y agoAnd in the case of humans possessed by Satan, they frequently will engage in quadrupedal locomotion at speed down stairs and across walls/ceilings, bent over backwards like a demonic crab.
- dhosek 2y agoBut that’s not a normative mode of movement. Among healthy adults, quadrupedal locomotion will represent a small portion of their movement and is far from a comfortable means of movement thanks to our short arms compared to other apes who engage in quadrupedal movement a significant fraction of the time.
- defrost 2y agoSo do humans, babies and the elderly especially. What has 4 legs in the morning, 2 in the afternoon, and 3 in the evening? The key here is how relaxed is the interpretation of "permanent".
- ndheebebe 2y agoBirds migrating are mostly zero legging it! To answer the question: a yacht race?
- defrost 2y agoI like the answer, I'm just not sure it's correct - are there any yacht races that have that many legs? (Aside from AI Yacht's, of course: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U79-kDQnbPE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U79-kDQnbPE )
- pcl 2y agoMahy do. The Caribbean 600, for example. Now, nobody is completing that race in one day, but that’s a different issue. https://caribbean600.rorc.org/ https://caribbean600.rorc.org/
- winwang 2y agosomething something wings are air-legs
- rawgabbit 2y agoBaby crawling adults walking and old man with cane?
- TOGoS 2y agoOkay but that's a pretty long day, isn't it? I'm not sure that's a proper 'riddle', per se.
- deleted 2y ago
- lovich 2y agoI mean fuck, if that counts then I’m quadrupedal every time I go up the stairs quickly in my house
- FireBeyond 2y agoIndeed, their trademark hopping is actually only really when stressed/startled. Many of the animal sanctuaries in zoos in Australia actually have little signs telling visitors not to be disappointed if they don't see the animals actually hopping: "Laying down and sunbathing, and the slow walk with their tail is a sign of relaxation and a lack of stress on the animal."
- ndheebebe 2y agoOh. I did see one hopping across a local park. I didnt realize it might be stressed. I assumed like a dog they like to run.
- xandrius 2y agoAnd the ground pangolin, apparently
- throw9474 2y agoYou know how when your hand is relaxed, your fingers are curled? When birds relax, their feet curl in a similar way, and this provides enough grip that if they're on a perch, they will automatically hold on as easily as if they're awake. There's a bit more to it, as the way the tendons in their feet and legs are attached, the foot will automatically grasp when the ankle is bent, so it's a much stronger grip than our floppy relaxed fingers would provide. Here's a quick rundown with a good gif illustrating how it works. https://windycityparrot.com/birds-sleep-standing-one-leg/ https://windycityparrot.com/birds-sleep-standing-one-leg/ They also have an extra balance organ between their hips that help them sray upright, so the whole anatomy lends itself to sleeping like this. Additionally, when we're awake and moving, we're constantly on our feet, so our feet and legs will get tired and need a rest. However, our arms don't generally get tired just from walking around, right? Birds are the opposite. They spend a lot of time flying, and their feet are mostly relaxed and resting while they're in the air. It's the wings and chest muscles that get tired. So sleeping on their feet has a whole other connotation to them.
- m463 2y ago> It's the wings and chest muscles that get tired. But some birds can use tricks to fly without flapping, and I'm pretty sure some birds can sleep aloft. https://news.mit.edu/2017/engineers-identify-key-albatross-marathon-flight-1011 https://news.mit.edu/2017/engineers-identify-key-albatross-m...
- xolox 2y agoI've read multiple times (over the years) that swifts are known for sleeping while in flight during their migrations between Africa and Europe. The best reference I could find right now is https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/three-swifts-probably-flew-non-stop-for-200-days https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/three-swi... which doesn't confirm but strongly implies (presuming a bird cannot go for 200 days without sleeping, and it was apparently up in the air all that time, it must have been taking "power naps" in mid-air).
- tehjoker 2y ago
- Crazyontap 2y agoWhen I was younger, I was fascinated by evolution, especially the intricacies of how things just work. This fascination also explains why many people believe in the intelligent design theory. However, witnessing the rapid evolution of AI with just a few hundred GPUs, enough data, and power, I no longer wonder what a billion years of feedback loops and randomness can achieve.
- utkarsh858 2y agoRapid evolution of AI needs a director, a human training and guiding it to get tangible results.
- cryptoz 2y agoFor now.
- utkarsh858 2y agoThe AI guiding and training another AI will in turn need guidance on higher level.
- setum 2y agountil it breaks the loop
- utkarsh858 2y agoEven if it does break the loop, it would always be named as started by a 'creator' or an initiator. And also the AI will require power source to maintain itself which will be provided by creatures outside it's system.
- bamboozled 2y agoWhich is built on all this "billions of years of randomness" to begin with.
- 2y ago
- willglynn 2y agoThe document to which this article refers was published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, and the article links there. It is also available as open access, which was not linked: https://hal.science/hal-04287433v1 https://hal.science/hal-04287433v1 https://hal.science/hal-04287433/file/Version%20HALL.pdf https://hal.science/hal-04287433/file/Version%20HALL.pdf
- m463 2y agoWhen I read "tensegrity" I thought of these strange tables/scupltures you can buy: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=tensegrity https://www.amazon.com/s?k=tensegrity
- dystroy 2y agoIf you look at the article, you'll see the picture of such sculpture (a rather impressive one, by the way).
- m463 2y agoI didn't see that, are you talking about the bird's leg?
- akovaski 2y agoThe last image is a pair of pictures of Needle Tower and Needle Tower II, which you can search for if the image doesn't load in the article for you.
- m463 2y agooh sorry, I read the article, then switched to the paper https://hal.science/hal-04287433/file/Version%20HALL.pdf https://hal.science/hal-04287433/file/Version%20HALL.pdf
- prmoustache 2y agoA good example are bicycle wheels made with ropes but if you think of it even of steel spokes as a single spoke by itself cannot maintain the structure and it all comes together when the spokes are tensionned. https://berdspokes.com/collections/berd-wheels https://berdspokes.com/collections/berd-wheels Obviously a wheel is the easiest design you can build based on tension given its symmetric nature.
- FiatLuxDave 2y agoIf that is what "tensegrity" makes you think of, I'm guessing you haven't seen this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkzeE6BVNIk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkzeE6BVNIk [Super Ball Bot, NASA]
- dystroy 2y agoPeople who do robotics, is efficient stable balancing at rest something which is studied and applied ?
- weinzierl 2y ago"The mechanism’s passive character is surprising" Are they saying that birds are in a stable equilibrium while standing? I always assumed that some low level activity in the Cerebellum would actively stabilize them even during sleep. If this is not the case, a dead parrot should be perfectly able to stand, right?
- Aachen 2y agoTangential but for my information, does anyone else find this article's thin font takes noticeably more effort to read? I'm not sure if it's just me (I might need to get a better display that can output more nits in this bright room) since the site owners apparently think it's good
- crazygringo 2y agoNot just you. The font is absolutely too thin to be used for body text. It might be more readable on low-res screens that hint the strokes to a full pixel width, but on Retina screens it's simply too hard to read. Thin weights like that are meant for display uses (titles, posters, etc.), not body text.
- avar 2y agoThis article doesn't even try to address what I feel is the deeper and more interesting question (but probably one that can't be answered): Why is it that horses, cows, giraffes and birds have all had to come up with a purely passive solution of "locking" themselves in place, either via their joints (for the four-legged), or via the tendon mechanism described here for birds? I.e. why wasn't in simpler in evolutionary terms to come up with some mechanism where 1% of the brain was dedicated to the relatively simple task of "station keeping", while the rest of the brain could benefit from sleep?
- 123pie123 2y agomay guess it's not as simple as we think it is or it has evolved somewhere and we either don't know about it or the trait didn't survive
- meindnoch 2y agoAlso, why didn't any animal evolve a way to avoid sleep completely?
- LoveMortuus 2y agoI thought that dolphins could avoid having to sleep while travelling long distances by having part of the brain asleep and then switching when tired. I could just be misremembering things, so I’m not certain.
- osigurdson 2y agoI'm ready for the follow up article: "Why hearts do not stop while sleeping"
- krisoft 2y agoThe article is clearly about why standing birds don't fall while they sleep. An interesting and somewhat related fact is that flying birds also sometimes sleep: https://www.audubon.org/news/scientists-finally-have-evidence-frigatebirds-sleep-while-flying https://www.audubon.org/news/scientists-finally-have-evidenc... The short story (at least in the case of the frigatebirds they studied) is that they do hemispherical sleeping, where only one half of their brain is asleep. And also it seems they only sleep while climbing in a thermal updraft. The theory being that "gliding up" is the safest portion of their flight. Relatadely there is a famous videoclip of a paraglider colliding with an eagle mid-flight. https://youtu.be/g8_hyqlQXpk?si=alAvnt4Xva4RGYw3 https://youtu.be/g8_hyqlQXpk?si=alAvnt4Xva4RGYw3 (The clip is quite scary, but both the pilot and the eagle seems to be fine at the end.) It is speculated that the incident happened because the bird was "dozing off" mid-flight in the updraft too. Of course this is difficult to verify.
- kjkjadksj 2y agoI’ve known a few people capable of this too. No bird specific machinery there just insomnia and some skill I guess.
- bilater 2y agoI really wish there. was a two line answer to these long drawn our articles
- nacho-daddy 2y agoCan someone please make Baba Yaga’s hut now?