But it isn’t. They follow a very precise strategy.
And now it seems that other birds have a somewhat similar trick that prevents collisions.
University of Queensland researchers filmed budgerigars flying towards each other in a narrow tunnel. They repeated the test 100 times, just to be sure, and noticed that almost always the birds veered right to prevent collisions.
Occasionally, the birds used a different approach. According to New Scientist,
“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.”
They did not observe a single crash.
Researchers hope to use these findings to design more efficient anti-crash systems in drones.
Unfortunately, the researchers decided to give credit to evolution. They believe that birds have evolved these strategies for “150 million years”.
Since evolution is a bumbling trial-and-error method, thousands of birds must have collided and potentially died before the strategy eliminated all crashes.
Where are all the fossils?
Source:
Klein, Alice. 2016. Budgies reveal the rule that means birds never collide in flight New Scientist (28 September).