I went for my grocery shopping a few days back...while i was waiting for my bus, i noticed something strange...it is worth writing about....
I was a very cold day...the previous day has been even colder...Because of that, the birds were behaving strangely.... there were thousands and thousands of birds in a a small area, just flying randomly in groups.... in fact the whole sky looked full of birds...they came, sat on an electricity line, then flew away, came again...it was very fascinating to see this....suddenly i observed something peculiar....
I am no Ornithologist, a person who studies birds.... Also all my prior experience of "Bird watching" were totally off the track!!! so i started this exercise without any prior bias...
Next time you see a large flock of birds sitting on a cable, you will observe that 90-100 % of the birds sit facing the same direction!!!! Agreed its not a path breaking observation...but i could not ignore the beauty of it....it looked so planned and much more sophisticated arrangement than a simple "bird brain" thought!!! I decided to observe it for some more time...
As the number of birds kept on increasing, the probability that the new bird will sit facing the popular direction increased...infact, after some time, i could have bet thousand rupees that the next bird will sit in which fashion!!! it was strangely funny... closer examination....i saw an even more funny thing...a new bird who come to the line can approach it in any direction...he then takes a right turn and comes and sits in the "normal" way.... if he sits in the opposite way, HE OR SHE ACTUALLY LOOKS AROUND, and changes the position.....I know all this sounds weird...I suggest you can try this excercise on your own and i am confident that you will come out with the same results!!!
Then one more thought hit me...why this is so? I could think of only two possible reason... One that there is some source of stimulus (like sunlight) in that particular direction, or secondly, it is just herd instinct!!!I think it is a combination of both the factor...then again there is something else i noticed.... the birds did not necessarily search for places where their allignment towards the maximum stimulus would be optimized!!!!! (I hope you are still with me....If u think this guy is going way over board with his birdy thing, i can understand!!!).... Like if you have 2 parallel cable across the road, birds on both side will face each other and the road!!!
Then i thought wheteher everything depended on how the first bird who came sat down.... unfortunately i could not observe this...but i could make an extrapolation.... if the first bird came and sat down in a particular manner, the probability is 90% that the next bird will sit in the same manner. For the third bird, it will be 95% and we can keep on going ahead!!!! btw dont quothe the figures anywhere!!!!!
Now, why does the first bird choose a particular direction? Here i think stimulus plays a part....I refuse to accept it that it is a total random event! The first bird has all possible options to choose from and he chooses the one that best suits him...the stimulus may be weak, but it may push him or her towards a particular orientation....what follows next i have already discussed!!!
Funny..... I think this is exactly how our traditions, culture and ethics developed... At one point somewhere in the past, the first person or first group of who came to a place started following a practice.... The other who came later copied them!!!
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8 comments:
loved it Bedu! never thought about it.
And the last paragraph was also something to think about.
Do keep writing frequently.
thanks Vinay [:)]
Hi There!!
Hope u won't mind comment from a stranger. (m related to EUREKA..)
I followed your blog, read this post, went out to the balcony of my office room, sat there for about 20 minutes, and gosh... ur observation was perfect.
I WITNESSED 2 similar instances. The first one, Pigeons (around 20 of them)in the terrace of a roof lined up in the same direction.
The second one, i saw sparrows (around 10 of them or so)lined up in the same direction in the barbed wire fence of my office.
Every new character joining them managed to follow the same direction, (though with a couple of seconds permissible exception in direction just finding the right balance.)
Nice observation.
SORRY FOR A DETAILED COMMENT. :-)
Hi Roshan!!! Thanks for testing our my observation...Appreciate ur comments! :)
interesting.. other than the stimulus, what could possibly be an explanation is the direction of vulnerability. you would like to keep an eye in the direction where there is a greater chance of attack. that explains why the birds on opposite side of road face each other. about the right turn of the bird, many birds, especially the hawk type, have a 45 degree vision much sharper than a straight vision. they keep tilting the heads all the time to focus. the particular reason why they attack the pray after creating a spiral path so that keep looking at the target at the 45 degree angle all the time. lastly, stability could also be the reason of particular direction. as birds keep flying off creating a backward thrust, it might be easier to balance in that direction. quite similar to getting off from a bus by looking and jumping forward (p.s. the forces when they perch on the line must be much lower creating almost no impact by means of their wings).
Bedu...
Amazing observation... reminded me of Bangalore factory post lunch discussions....and associated funny and weird moments........hehehehehe
hahahaha...thanks Pats!!!
The analogy is good :)
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