Natures wonders: birds naturally avoid each other (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, September 30, 2016, 19:47 (2974 days ago) @ David Turell

In flight birds avoid head on crashes with each other by using the same avoidance mechanisms, turn right: - https://www.newscientist.com/article/2107414-budgies-reveal-the-rule-that-means-birds-n... - "How do birds avoid crashing into each other when approaching head-on? They have an in-built preference for veering right. - *** - "Mandyam Srinivasan at the University of Queensland, Australia, and his colleagues uncovered the simple trick when filming pairs of budgerigars flying towards each other in a narrow tunnel. - "During more than 100 tests, the birds moved to each other's left hand side in 84 per cent of cases, and zero crashes were observed.
The budgerigars also tended to fly past each other at different heights, which prevented mid-air collisions on the rare occasions that one of the birds veered left. - "Group hierarchy may dictate which bird moves up and which moves down, Srinivasan says. “It looks like the dominant birds prefer to go lower,” he says. “Maybe it's more energy efficient and easier to go lower than higher, so the non-dominant bird is forced to gain altitude.” - "These crash-avoidance strategies have evolved over 150 million years in birds." - Comment: The could well be a learned behavior from the survivors with right turn behaviors.