BIRD HEAD SWINING

It's not completely figured out yet, but the current best guess is that they do it to stabilize the retinal image. Do you know about nystagmus? That's how we humans do it - with eye movement; otherwise everything would be blurry.

Hmm, That's interesting.

I have been wondering that why magpies(kind of bird) always swing their head back and force when they walk on the ground. caz there are a lot of magpies in our backyard.

thank you very much !!

you are correct, they are checking to see if KFC has removed their ass as yet.

Is that accommodation of eyes/

i think (i suppose) it has something to do with "balance", because birds dont have arms like human to swing to maintain balance when walking.

just a guess........

Not a bad guess - when they swing their wings, they stop walking and start flying...

Why YOU (and all of us) swing your hands while walking?

Interesting Question ~!!

In natural walking, i mean very comfortable walking

do you think that human swings our hands intentionally? or it's just a natural reaction by any kind of body moment ?

Human swings hand naturally (and not intentionally). Similarly birds swing their head naturally.

yeah,, actually i feel that way..

I think it may not be controlled by Central nervous system.. just my guess just in case of natural straight walking.

HMMM...But the reason ?

Let us think more about that..

All birds think they're chimps, and all chimps think they're birds... It's one of those chicken and egg things.

I think humans naturally swing their hands to assist with balance. Try walking and swinging your hands in unison with your legs. It's not easy to do.

It is possible only during march past practice in NCC

Let me tell you it is possible in march pasts anywhere. Especially in the engineering divisions who find the laws of physics compelling and the drill manual a lot less so.

Where is NCC?

BAB

NCC is National Cadet Corp. After the II world war I think the NCC must be existing in all countries.

Why do all four legged animals moves all four arms simultaneously?

For that same reason we humans are moving our hands , aves, (winged ) birds move their neck muscles, and heads (same muscular system) while walking. Note : birds that spring (jump) to advance on the earth, do not move their heads in the same manner. They do move it but this is done in order to gain inertia. It all goes back to their predecessor, the flying lizards. Although the eye stabilizer or retinal vision system is an interesting theory, it is simply not true.

Wangito.

By almost any standard of science, retina stabilization is true. How many studies do you need to see?

Thanks for commenting.

I am very interested in the subject. Could you please let me have a link(s) to where they clearly connect Retinal stabilization through head movement (back and force,) in birds.

Thanks

Wangito.

"Why YOU (and all of us) swing your hands while walking? "

Except for teenagers who will have their hands firmly crammed into their pockets.

I hope that's the correct ans of his Q. Why human waves their hands while walking..

Purely for the easiest advancement and some times for balance when they turning while advancing.

I give you GA

Consider birds in flight. Must faster apparent motion to focus on, but no back-and-forth head swinging. You do see slow (natural appearing) side-to-side head motion, which could be for focus and depth perception. I would think the head swinging when walking is more related to the body motion of the walking bird (retinal balance) than to the apparent motion of the surroundings.

I haven't had much luck watching for bird head swinging while they fly... Slow moving bird (flying in formation: geese is what I'm thinking of...haven't seen many chickens do this before) will keep their heads straight forward for aerodynamics as much as possible.

Smaller, relatively fast birds that fly at low altitudes would need binocular vision to see objects so they don't crash into things but many of these species ALREADY have binocular vision.

Generally binocular vision is present in predators...and 'googly' eyes on the sides of the head (whatever the technical term is for this evades me) is more of a defensive trait so they have perhipheral vision that covers much more area around them.

As for the wobbly chicken heads....maybe their neck is just too long! Actually I think it's more likely that their body moves back and forth for balance and their head bobs around to counteract this movement, keeping the inner-ear as stable as possible to help with balance. If they didn't they might get motion sickness! Imagine if evolution didn't take care of this...a world full of chicken's yakking all over the place. Terrible! Just terrible!

For 31/32

Chickens and other primarily ground-dwelling birds (dinosaurs, etc.) generally have their eyes on the sides...hawks, eagles, owls, and other raptors have eyes forward and have bionocular vision for many reasons. Ever watch flying geese - why in a V-shape...near to watch where everyone else is - requires staggered formation = V. Watch the leader aqs to how it moves its head and eye views.

Bird head bobbing and swinging are also associated with bobbing/swiniging of the tail-remember lever forces and angular momentum. Similarly try to balance yourself on a rail or wire or run really faster without moving your arms.

Side-placed eyed bird brains (as in similar eyed lizard and mammals) must be able to process the two images - wrap-around views...just consider what the insects and other arthropods do with hundreds of pixel bits.

I am signing off for this topic.

TOM

Members interested in the actual science might start with

Principles of Avian Clinical Neuroanatomy, Susan Orosz

She's one of the leading avian vets in the US. It really is primarily an OKN response. Monocular vision appears advantageous to pigeons. There is no significant biomechanical effect. There are literally thousands of peer-reviewed articles on head bobbing, most by neuroscientists, otolaryngologists, and neurologists.

. . . an over-reaching, and fallacious, interpretation of the articles; and an ascribing of cause and effect relationships never claimed by the specialists: that bobbing is an effect of vision, rather than that vision physiology is an adaptation compensatorially compatible with ambulatory head bobbing. It is easy to draw such faulty inferences, and one must always be cautious against doing so . . . against s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g observations and conclusions into unstated hypotheses.

It's a bit like trying to focus on things on the side of the track when your in a train: you flick your eyes forward, focus, track the image back and repeat.

If you analysed a film of the chicken you would see that the head (and eye) is completely stationary as it moves back relative to the body; then it jerks forward, stops again etc. As others have said stabilising the retinal image.

A GA fer ya!

Here's a link that gives some visuals about the stationary head (plus lots of other stuff).

http://www.psych.ndsu.nodak.edu/mccourt/Psy460/Eye%20movements/Eye%20movements.html

This is really a detailed explaination of what PVVELD said in post 13. I give GA to you too

Cause day gots rythem?

It's believed that birds like pigeons and chickens bob their heads in order to better judge distances. Birds with their eyes on the side of their heads have little binocular vision. Though with eyes on the side of their heads they get a better view of their surroundings. Monocular vision is poor in judging distance of the predator coming toward you.

A quick head move gives two successive views for 3D imaging as you suggest,

Aurizon at large

Who said anything about 3D.

Or how a bird brain would process them?

So you know huh

I just realized I may have read the question incorrectly. You asked about birds swinging their heads (i.e., yaw) and I answered about bobbing (translation up and down). I spent the first 30 years of my life in an area where chicken farming was widespread and I've seen only the bobbing. Is this the movement you mean?

It is to check there CG. Birds do not have arms and there wings stay mostly fixed at there sides. As one could surmise the amount of energy needed to balance a bird using its wings would be quite large. The bird will move its head in order to balance its self then stay relatively motion less. Then they will move and re-balance themselves. Watch a bird on a phone line, you will be able to really see the subtleties. The head is never in the same place twice. If this motion was need for sight, the bird would also move in this fashion during fight.

Unlike humans, most birds, except for raptors, have their eyes located on the sides of their heads. That is to enable them to better watch out for predators. But the disadvantage is that they do not have depth perception like we do. To compensate, they swing their heads back and forth to scan the field in front of them.

You see similar phenomena with fish-- sharks and other hunters have their eyes in front while the rest have their eyes on the side. They swim in schools to widen their effective field of view.

I was told that it is to keep an "EYE" (pun intended) out for preditors.

If you have a continously moving eye, you can no really notice the moving preditor stalking you. But if your eye is stil, any movement stands out greatly.l

They inherited that trait from there parents, who would never tell them why, family secret I guess. Sorry I couldn't come up with a better answer.

Swining? As in wallowing like pigs? I hard that pigs wallow to stay cool. Birds do to discourage pests in their feathers.

I can't recall seeing a bird moving it head while walking. Some of them don't really walk but have to hop along and the neck and head movement do happen there. Although there are some 50 species frequenting my garden I don't often see any walking.

An ostrich (if I remember correctly) does not swing its head while running but there is a slight swaying when walking. When running the neck is pulled backwards. I suppose excessive head movement will, throw an ostrich out of balance.

I just had a look at the plover across the street (broad sidewalk) and they also do not show any head movement.

The head swinging plays a part in the mating game in some species (budgies, parrots etc) and it seems to show some emotion.

Birds seem to overdo neck movement when feeding The ostrich has about an 7" stroke for picking up food. It may be that they are far sighted and must do the selection from a distance.

Birds and its predecessors seem to use the head, neck and tail for a balancing device.

What bogs me is the hammerhead and hooPoe being able to use their heads like hammers to dig a hole into the tree trunk.

The African HooPoe

In America, we call them woodpeckers, hence the name of the carton "Woody the Woodpecker."

Woodpeckers are designed with a special set of muscles to support the neck and the high-powered pecking into wood for food. Without these extra muscles, the woodpeckers would break its own necks

Not only this, They have a special mechanism that stabilize the brain avoiding shocks. It is a very complicated system of shock absorbing. (If not it will turn from woodpeckers into a kookoo.)

Wangito.

i have read many posts here that i think are close. reality: birds are dinosaurs. they used to have long tails. the extra weight of the long tail was evoluntionarily shed so they could fly. they used to use their tails for balance. so, something else had to take up the job. while flying, head swinging not needed. air control surfaces can more easily maintain balance. on the ground, just leaves the head and neck for balance.

question: how would the balance and gait of a chicken be affected by imobilizing the neck and head so they could not swing. my guess would be that the chicken would fall down a lot.

I think it has more to do with the fact that their knees are on backwards.