A groundbreaking experiment led by musician and acoustic scientist Benn Jordan has successfully demonstrated the storage of digital data within the memory of a European Starling. The innovative project involved converting a simple drawing into an audio spectrogram, which the bird, known as "The Mouth," later reproduced, effectively recreating the original image. This unique method leverages the starling's renowned mimicry capabilities.
Jordan utilized a spectral synthesizer to transform a PNG image of a bird into a unique soundwave, largely inaudible to the human ear. This encoded sound was then played to "The Mouth," a rescue starling known for its exceptional ability to imitate a wide range of sounds. Upon analyzing the bird's subsequent vocalizations, Jordan discovered that the starling had faithfully incorporated and reproduced the encoded sound.
The experiment effectively transferred approximately 176 kilobytes of uncompressed information into the starling's vocal memory. While not a conventional storage solution, Jordan noted that this process hypothetically demonstrates a data transfer rate of nearly 2 megabytes per second. This remarkable feat leverages the starling's natural capacity for complex acoustic learning and memory.
The findings garnered significant attention after being highlighted by Sterling Crispin on social media. Crispin stated in a widely shared tweet, > "This is one of the craziest ideas I've ever seen. He converted a drawing of a bird into a spectrogram (PNG -> Soundwave) then played it to a Starling who sung it back reproducing the PNG. Using the birds brain as a hard drive with 2mbps read write speed." The work underscores the extraordinary vocal and auditory processing capabilities inherent in European Starlings.
Jordan, who has a background in sound design and acoustic research, emphasized the unique nature of this achievement. He stated that, "To my knowledge, this may technically be the first time anyone has ever stored data in an animal." While not intended to replace traditional hard drives, the experiment opens novel avenues for research into avian cognition and the potential for unconventional data encoding and retrieval methods.