this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2025
863 points (98.1% liked)

Technology

74731 readers
3014 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
enu@lemmy.world
technopagan@lemmy.world
L4s@lemmy.world
L3s@hackingne.ws
L4s@hackingne.ws
863
Yes, you can store data on a bird — enthusiast converts PNG to bird-shaped waveform, teaches young starling to recall file at up to 2MB/s (www.tomshardware.com)
submitted 3 days ago by gedaliyah@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
153 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Goretantath@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago (2 children)

So a moving target of data you cant reliably recall and might get shot by someone looking for food. At least its neat though.

[–] brsrklf@jlai.lu 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Average weight for a starling is less than 100g. The whole thing with head and feathers and bones and whatever. You'd have to be very hungry to hunt that. And I suspect if you shoot at it you'd pulverize it completely.

Though cats are going to be a problem.

[–] nyan@lemmy.cafe 3 points 2 days ago

There will be a lot of cases where the data gets accidentally encapsulated (then fragmented due to incompatible protocols) in a cat.

[–] AstralPath@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 days ago

Who on earth is gonna shoot a starling for food?

Have you seen starlings? They can fit in the palm of your hand.