MEMES
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Pigeon’s walk
OK the gloves are off on this one. Pigeons have a ridiculous way of walking. Inelegant, inefficient and just plain silly.
There have been various unconvincing explanations as to why they do it. The first is that they are using the same technique which ballet dancers and ice skaters use when doing a fast spin ( called spotting ). In other words, the pigeon’s head actually stays still in relation to the ground while its body moves forward - in order to stabilise the image its eyes are receiving.
Interesting idea ; but wrong.
If you have a good look at any video featuring the walk using a freeze-frame or slo-mo video system, you’ll see that the head does indeed snap dramatically back and forth in relation to the ground.
Second theory is that the bird’s brain takes a snapshot of the current view, then the head moves forward, next shot etc etc. This may be so, but what kind of a design is that? If you set out to build a vision system ( on which your life depended ) would you choose one in which the ‘camera’ tracked smoothly, or one which jerked forward, took a snap and then went off-line ?
Anyway, the main point of this entry is not to find an explanation for the clearly daft pigeon-walk, but rather to ask - if pigeons ( and many other birds ) do it, what about their extinct cousins, the dinosaurs? . . .
If you see a Hollywood rendered film, or a BBC doc on dinosaurs, they always walk in an elegant, graceful and efficient way befitting of their reputation. We propose that a good proportion of them walked just like pigeons. If so, this would have profound implications in the field of paleontology, and may even go some way to explaining their downfall.
A couple of tons of head snapping back and forth every step? No wonder the mammals got the edge on them.
reader Alex comments :
" Would looking at how emus and ostriches walk help ? "
