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[HN Gopher] Why birds do not fall while sleeping
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Why birds do not fall while sleeping
Author : mdp2021
Score : 78 points
Date : 2024-10-15 08:56 UTC (1 days ago)
HTML web link (news.cnrs.fr)
TEXT w3m dump (news.cnrs.fr)
| ndheebebe wrote:
| > The only permanent bipeds of the animal kingdom alongside
| humans
|
| Kangaroos?
| dhosek wrote:
| Kangaroos engage in quadrupedal (actually pentapedal--using
| their tail as well) locomotion at slow speeds.
| cryptoz wrote:
| Humans 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 to indicate training
| may not be required for temporary bipedal behavior in some
| dogs.
| TheDong wrote:
| > Maybe I should update
| 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_researc
| h
| swatcoder wrote:
| In 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.
| defrost wrote:
| So 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 wrote:
| Birds migrating are mostly zero legging it!
|
| To answer the question: a yacht race?
| defrost wrote:
| I 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 )
| winwang wrote:
| something something wings are air-legs
| rawgabbit wrote:
| Baby crawling adults walking and old man with cane?
| TOGoS wrote:
| Okay but that's a pretty long day, isn't it? I'm not sure
| that's a proper 'riddle', per se.
| defrost wrote:
| Like it or not it's been a definitive example of a
| classic riddle since _before_ it appeared in _Oedipus
| Rex_ , an Athenian tragedy by Sophocles that was first
| performed c. 429 BC.
|
| ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oedipus_Rex
| seszett wrote:
| > _So do humans, babies and the elderly especially._
|
| Only the healthy adult form is taken into account
| generally, you wouldn't say that dragonflies are mainly
| swimming animals for example, even if they do spend most of
| their life underwater as larvae.
|
| The point here is that kangaroos that are capable of
| bipedal motion will always choose quadrupedal motion at low
| speeds. While humans who can walk will always choose to
| walk when possible.
| lovich wrote:
| I mean fuck, if that counts then I'm quadrupedal every time I
| go up the stairs quickly in my house
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Indeed, 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 wrote:
| Oh. 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.
| teruakohatu wrote:
| Also the wallaby and there are some hopping rodents found
| around the world.
| xandrius wrote:
| And the ground pangolin, apparently
| throw9474 wrote:
| You 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/ 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 wrote:
| > 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-m...
| tehjoker wrote:
| If a bird gets overweight and/or doesn't have enough different
| surfaces to grip, it will develop pressure sores on its feet
| just to add some nuance.
| Crazyontap wrote:
| When 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 wrote:
| Rapid evolution of AI needs a director, a human training and
| guiding it to get tangible results.
| cryptoz wrote:
| For now.
| utkarsh858 wrote:
| The AI guiding and training another AI will in turn need
| guidance on higher level.
| setum wrote:
| until it breaks the loop
| utkarsh858 wrote:
| Even 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 wrote:
| Which is built on all this "billions of years of randomness"
| to begin with.
| utkarsh858 wrote:
| Random, that's what we think, bacteria living in gut can
| also think the whole digestive process to be part of some
| random universal law
| hnhg wrote:
| Using your analogy, it's absolutely unknowable to
| bacteria, and therefore absolutely unknowable to us.
| Random is perhaps the most intellectually honest way of
| describing it, since it is widely accepted that
| randomness is a feature of relatively uncomplicated
| systems.
| utkarsh858 wrote:
| What is called as 'Random', I will term it as 'free
| will'. In case of a human training an AI, free will be of
| the human and in case of creation of universe free will
| be that of the 'intelligent designer'
| TrainedMonkey wrote:
| AFAIK key insight into evolution is not randomness but rather
| sheer amount of compute. Specifically, evolution is a massively
| parallel flood algorithm that will try every single mutation.
| Barely any of them will have positive impact on organism
| fitness, but some will.
| kortilla wrote:
| AI isn't being trained on random though. It's the corpus of a
| large portion of all of humanity's written communication. I
| don't think it's a good analogy to evolution.
|
| A single training session will iterate more than the number of
| generations of all birds.
| willglynn wrote:
| The 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-04287433/file/Version%20HALL.pdf
| m463 wrote:
| When I read "tensegrity" I thought of these strange
| tables/scupltures you can buy:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/s?k=tensegrity
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