Nature & Environment

Can birds tell what a road's speed limit is ?

By T.K. Randall
August 22, 2013 ·  10 comments

Image Credit: CC 3.0 Alvesgaspar Biologists Pierre Legagneux and Simon Ducatez started to investigate the behavior of birds that had landed on the road while they were driving home from the lab. What they found was that the birds seemed to know what speed the cars on that road generally traveled at and took off sufficiently in advance to avoid being hit, even when the car in any given instance might be driving slower than the limit.

"What was really cool is that birds did not respond to the speed of the car but rather to the speed limit of the road section," said Legagneux. It is believed that the birds perceive the vehicles as predators and assign different levels of danger to different roads based on the typical speed of the cars they've encountered there.

Source: New Scientist | Comments (10)

Tags: