Using a special code .. birds check for fake news and don't post it

Laila Ali

Fake news is on any social network, including social animal networks, this is reported by a new study by researchers from the University of Montana, where birds distinguish fake news before they are retransmitted, based on the principle of trust in their neighbors.

This study, recently published in the journal Nature 27 January 2020, is the culmination of years-long research by graduates of the American University of Montana, Nora Carlson and Chris Templeton and university professor at the College of Humanities, Eric Green, and the study sheds a new light on the social networks of birds.

"This is the first time that we know that a nutcracker pays attention to the source of the information, and this affects the appeal he makes," says Green, who shared Carlson and Templeton with a desire to try to learn how birds relate to each other and have collected bird calls over the years. It is then sent back by other birds. "

Types of bird calls and their meanings

Green says every type of bird has a song, which boys usually sing, to tell their children, "I'm here, I'm here." Her loud and complicated calls usually begin during the breeding season.

But for warning calls, each sound represents a specific threat, such as "the snake on the ground" or "flying falcon," and these calls between birds transmit the current level of danger through specific information. All other species in the woods hear it on a vast communications network, putting it on high alert.

During this study, Green and his researchers wanted to determine how the black-titmouse birds and red-chested walnuts encrypted the information in their conversations.

In bird contact, for example, a high-pitched "Set" sound from a titmouse refers to a "flying hawk", which causes a strong reaction, as other birds silence, look and then disappear in the bush.

Also, alarm calls can travel very quickly through the forest, Green says that in previous experiments they recorded the speed of calls between birds at a speed of 100 miles per hour. Green also says, "Sometimes birds in the forest know that a falcon is coming five minutes before it arrives."

As for the harsh and intense "offensive call", it pushes birds of all kinds to flow together to harass the predator, and when the predator hears the call to attack him, he usually goes hunting away from this area, so warning calls between birds are very effective.

Green calls this type of bird communication "original social media."

Avoid spreading fake news

For the study on chitmouse and nut-breaker researchers, the researchers focused on direct information "something the bird sees or hears directly" versus indirect information, which is obtained through the social bird network and which may contain false alarms.

"It's all about how to deal with fake news, because if you got information on social media, but you didn't verify it, and you retweet it or pass it on, that's how fake news begins to spread," Green says.

Titmouse and nut-breaker share resistance to the same animals that prey on them, the Big Own Owl and the Dwarf Owl. For young birds, the elf owl is more dangerous than the large owl owl, due to its smaller radius, which allows it to hunt prey better.

Using loudspeakers in the woods, the researchers imitated the alert call to Titmouse bird of the great-owl peer owl, with the lowest threat, and the high-threatening dwarf owl on the nut breaker.

Warning calls varied depending on the level of threat (a large horned owl versus a dwarf owl), and whether they were direct (from the predators themselves) or indirect (from the titmouse).

What the researchers discovered about the walnut bird was surprising, as direct information caused its calls to change according to whether the threat was high or a threat low. But the Titans alarm alert about predators did not matter much to the walnut, regardless of the threat level.

Green says that the research results indicate the ability of the nutcracker to make complex decisions about catalysts in its environment, and to avoid spreading "fake news" before confirming itself of a predator.

Green says, "We must lift him the hat, because he has a lot of intelligence."

Green assures that studying a nutcracker will ultimately help researchers better understand how animal communication networks work and how different types decode, encode, and pass information.