this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2025
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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.

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[–] brsrklf@jlai.lu 51 points 2 days ago (1 children)

And they say physical media is dead!

[–] Tikiporch@lemmy.world 19 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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

[–] Cort@lemmy.world 15 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 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

[–] brsrklf@jlai.lu 14 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

They tried to make this a thing once :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexplay

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-D

If Disney did this, they'd probably just poison the birds so they die faster.

[–] Pulptastic@midwest.social 4 points 2 days ago

Capitalism at its worst. Here let’s make more plastic garbage so that you have to buy more things.

[–] khannie@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

Is it a subscription though? Investors like that