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
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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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[–] gozz@lemmy.world 1 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

It isn't a digital channel because it does not reproduce digital data. Unless it's a one-bit signal of "does this look like a bird? yes/no", but then the human making that assessment is part of the channel. To claim this is a digital system would require us to be so reductive as to redefine the meaning of the word.

[–] CookieOfFortune@lemmy.world 0 points 21 hours ago

If we’re being pedantic, shouldn’t we consider that it can be a one bit signal? Otherwise you should be specific about what bandwidth you’d consider digital.