[Tweeters] A new bird behavior discovery - for me

[Mark Walton via Tweeters]

Hello Heather,

Sure, feel free to share that wherever you want. 🙂

Mark

Ar Luan 29 Iúil 2024 ag 07:04, scríobh Heather Gervais <hmg98103 at gmail.com>:


> Oh wow, Mark. Thank you very much for that in-depth description. I didn't

> know any of it and found it extremely interesting. I'm in awe.

>

> A little while back I started a Facebook group - Fun Facts About Birds!

> (North America) - where I'd really love to share a short summary of the

> knowledge you just gave us. Would you be okay with me doing that? I think

> folks in the group would find their jaws dropped just like it did.

>

> If anyone here would like to join the group and share tidbits they've

> learned about their favorite species, I would love to have you. Since

> starting the group last year, I'm really the only one who's been sharing

> factoids. I'm a bird 'lay person' like all the other folks in the group,

> but with a little help from Google (a lot of help, lol), I've managed to

> share - and learn - a decent measure of information. It would be really

> exciting to get other bird-passionate lay people like me as well as experts

> in the group.

>

> Peace and happy birding to you Mark, and to you all.

>

> Cheers,

>   Heather

>

> Heather Gervais

> Certified Personal Trainer

> Fitness Instructor

> Spanish Interpreter

> Good person

>

> “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”

> - Mahatma Gandhi

>

> Message sent from my iPhone. Please excuse its brevity and occasional

> typos.

>

>

> On Jul 29, 2024, at 3:51 AM, Mark Walton via Tweeters <

> tweeters at u.washington.edu> wrote:

>

> 

> I'm a neuroscientist and my research interests involve how the brain

> controls eye and head movements so this is getting close to my area of

> study.  The ability to hold the head steady in space, even while the body

> is moving, is referred to as the vestibulocollic reflex. Basically, the

> organs of the inner ear (the otoliths and semicircular canals) detect head

> acceleration. The brain then sends a copy of this head acceleration signal

> to the neck muscles, which causes them to make an equal and opposite head

> movement. This effectively cancels out any short-duration unplanned

> movement of the head in space. If the head movement was intentional, the

> brain sends a copy of that voluntary movement command to the brain areas

> responsible for the vestibulocollic reflex, so that the reflex can be

> temporarily cancelled.

>

> This reflex is one of several "gaze stabilization reflexes". To understand

> why these are necessary, think about the times when you've seen a news

> camera operator running after the action, while still filming. The camera

> is moving all over the place while the person runs, and you can't see much

> of anything. This is what would happen to our vision without these gaze

> stabilization reflexes. In graduate school, one of my professors told of a

> man who had suffered brain damage that wiped out one of these reflexes

> (vestibulo-ocular reflex, which causes the eyes to rotate in the opposite

> direction from an unplanned head movement). The man could not even read a

> book without wedging his head into a corner of the bedroom, because even

> the tiny head movements that we constantly make were enough to make his

> vision too "jiggly" to read. The vestibulocollic reflex, and the

> vestibulo-ocular reflex, are the reason that you don't become functionally

> blind while you're dancing.

>

> So many species, including humans, have this same vestibulocollic reflex,

> to stabilize the head position in space during movement. Obviously, this

> gaze stabilization is even more crucial if you're a bird perched on a

> moving branch, or making a sharp turn in flight. So, not surprisingly, the

> vestibulocollic reflex is extremely strong in birds. Another reason that it

> is so strong in birds is that they have a much smaller range of eye

> movements than humans do, which means they have to rely more heavily on the

> vestibulocollic reflex, and less on the vestibulo-ocular reflex.

>

>

> Mark Walton

>

>

> Ar Sath 27 Iúil 2024 ag 16:44, scríobh Dennis Paulson via Tweeters <

> tweeters at u.washington.edu>:

>

>> Jim, it seems to me that birds are able to do that, hold their heads

>> steady as they move their bodies in different positions. That long,

>> flexible neck facilitates that greatly. Watch a coot or pigeon moving and

>> note their bobbing head. They are holding their head still, presumably for

>> better vision, as the body moves under it.

>>

>> Dennis Paulson

>> Seattle

>>

>> > On Jul 27, 2024, at 12:41 PM, Jim Betz via Tweeters <

>> tweeters at u.washington.edu> wrote:

>> >

>> > Hi,

>> >

>> >   I've gone to Channel Drive (near La Conner) several times this week.

>> I was attempting to

>> >

>> > get a picture of a swallow in flight and although a barely useful image

>> it does show

>> >

>> > something I didn't know about.  The swallow was making one of those

>> tight, horizontal

>> >

>> > turns.  The wings, tail, and body were all turned almost 90 degrees

>> (think "vertical").

>> >

>> >   But the HEAD was still locked in the normal/horizontal orientation.

>> A subsequent

>> >

>> > photo of a flock of Western Sandpipers showed the same thing. Perhaps

>> this is a

>> >

>> > common bird behavior that I just haven't noticed before?

>>      Fun!!!   - Jim

>> >

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