Archive for birds

ageein’ dogz

Posted in Books, pictures with tags , , , , , , , on July 5, 2023 by xi'an

While eating a quick lunch in the CEREMADE common room, I came across an older Nature paper of 3 Feb 2022 on the Dog Aging Project, a longitudinal study of domestic dogs. Describing the goal and design of the project rather than its yet to come findings. The population is made of self-nominated (US) dog owners, with what seems to me like an overkill of precautions about data gathering. (On a totally personal basis, I always find puzzling the amount of money and efforts spent on pets when humans are overwhelmingly struggling to achieve decent living conditions. Plus, pets consume up to a fifth of the world’s meat and fish. And kill 25 million birds a year in the UK only.)

“Veterinary and animal ethical concerns about using pets as research subjects include non-uniform oversight protections and the need to respect research subjects who cannot consent to participation (…) The general approach we take to dog owner informed consent for their dog participation is modelled after informed consent used for human subjects research.”

sticker for birds

Posted in Statistics with tags , , , , on March 3, 2023 by xi'an

A moderately interesting article in the NYT on why birds crash into (my) windows and the limited efficiency of bird stickers, esp. those glued from the inside. Just like insects, who have difficulties understanding the concept of glass (!), birds fly into glass windows because they do not realise they are there. What I find surprising in the case of my own house is that they (fairly rarely) crash into windows of rooms with no perspective, i.e. with a wall behind the window. Birds never enter when these windows are open, for instance. One possible explanation is that under some lighting the window is reflecting the outside for the flying bird rather than the inside of the house. Supporting this explanation is the observation that the crashes I noticed occur around the same time in late Fall, when sun is quite low. (And no connection other than coincidence with yesterday’s post on Thunderbird!)