A music and science lover has revealed that some birds can store and retrieve digital data. Specifically, he converted a PNG sketch of a bird into an audio waveform, then tried to embed it in the song memory of a young starling, ready for later retrieval as an image. Benn Jordan made a video of this feat, sharing it on YouTube, and according to his calculations, the bird-based data transfer system could be capable of around 2 MB/s data speeds.

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[–] 68 points 1 year ago (10 children)

2MB/s / 16Mbps is enough for 4K HEVC video and audio. In theory you could encode a full movie with enough starlings.

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  • [–] 49 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    And they say physical media is dead!

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    The average lifespan of a starling is usually between two and five years.

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago* (3 children)

    This just gave me an idea for a new movie rental service. You'll never own anything. If we can get homing pigeons to learn movies, we could cut delivery costs

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  • [–] 63 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Reducing Benn Jordan down to just “enthusiast” is wild.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    The breadth of capability this guy has is insane to me. Almost every time I watch one of his videos I find that he's managed to basically gain a new field of expertise. It's really impressive.

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  • [–] 124 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Imagine the possibilities for piracy and secure messaging (provided that the birds don't snitch on you).

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  • [–] 58 points 1 year ago

    We're finally getting tweets back

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  • [–] 50 points 1 year ago (10 children)

    Quick, someone teach it the soundtrack to Doom

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  • [–] 26 points 1 year ago (7 children)
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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" just got a whole lot worse.

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  • [–] 40 points 1 year ago

    This is a whole new twist over RFC 1149: IP over Avian Carriers

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  • [+] 40 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)
  • [–] 37 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Some people will use anything but cloud storage

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  • [–] 28 points 1 year ago

    Well of course NSA's spy device can store information. We've known this for decades

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  • [–] 23 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    good to see there are new developments in the IP Over Avian Carrier space

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    Though this proprietary implementation of cloud storage for IPoAC is very innovative, it's really only useful for enthusiasts of the protocol and it comes with some security concerns. Writing data to the storage is inconsistent and requires a lot of effort on the uploader's part. And if you do manage to get the data to write properly, there's no guarantee retrieving the data will be lossless.

    The most worrying part for me, however, is that there's no guarantee that the data can be removed from the cloud without obliterating the server it's stored on or waiting for the device to degrade over time. Until these are addressed I don't think we'll see widespread adaptation.

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  • [–] 23 points 1 year ago

    Data on a bird ? This will convince people about birds being drones more now.

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  • [–] 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

    Birds are the OG text device. Tie a little note and send them on their way.

    One famous example is Cher Ami, a pigeon who delivered a message that saved a group of surrounded American soldiers during WW1.

    Edit: WW1 and WW3 /s

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  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Me, everytime I see a bird:

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  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Birds are totally organic organisms. Rightttttt. BIRDS ARENT REAL!!!!

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Inb4 Doom can now run on birds.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    Only a matter of time before megacorps put ads and a subscription service on bird calls, now. 😫

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago

    The video is by Benn Jordan, I wholeheartedly recommend this video and entire channel. Guy is a world treasure.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago

    back to carrier pigeons?

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  • [–] 27 points 1 year ago (3 children)
  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Lol ok there might be no real birds left but they definitely exist in the fossil record, it was likely the inventions of trains that drove birds to the next highest dimension (which isn't real, hence birds were real but now they are not).

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    While it sounds great in practice, I find it suspicious that they never mention the the final bill.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    What if I have bird blindness and I try and teach it to a duck?

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    ?Fun? fact: In a steampunk world, birds would serve as CPUs. America experimented with using pigeons for bomb guidance. As it turned out, three birds pecking at an image had pretty good accuracy. They ultimately lost out to silicon, due to the size, maintenance, and training time.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago

    I want this to be the next reveal in a movie or TV series, in the same fashion as the one of the Navajo "backing up" the Smoking Man's magnetic tape in The X-Files.

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