{"id":280,"date":"2012-04-27T09:46:04","date_gmt":"2012-04-27T14:46:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/?p=280"},"modified":"2012-04-27T09:46:04","modified_gmt":"2012-04-27T14:46:04","slug":"bird-brained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/musings\/bird-brained\/","title":{"rendered":"Bird-Brained?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ever been called a \u201c<em>bird brain<\/em>\u201d?\u00a0 Well, though the person using the phrase might have intended it as an insult let us look at it from a different perspective.<\/p>\n<p>Birds do indeed have rather small brains.\u00a0 Yet into those minuscule craniums, they have some rather impressive processing power packed\u2026<\/p>\n<p>Can you even imagine the control needed to successfully fly?\u00a0 No, we can\u2019t blow flying off as \u201cinstinct\u201d \u2013 baby birds have to be taught how to fly by their parents.<\/p>\n<p>And then there is their amazing ability to find their way back to their nest.\u00a0 Let\u2019s put that into perspective as well.\u00a0 Imagine yourself in a city with no road markings, no street signs, no neatly mapped out grid lines where everything is painted the same color.\u00a0 Got that?\u00a0 OK, now add hundreds of levels, with paths interconnecting levels in a truly haphazard fashion, along with everything changing from day to day.\u00a0 Still comfortable with your chances of finding the cubicle you call home?\u00a0 OK, now let\u2019s add scale to the story \u2013 this multi-level maze extends for miles.\u00a0 Still think you could find your way home \u2013 if you do you\u2019re a lot brighter than me, or an even more delusional than I am \u2013 and that is saying something!<\/p>\n<p>In case you\u2019re wondering what circumstance in a bird\u2019s life I have just described \u2013 it is this\u2026\u00a0 Many birds make their nests in trees, which are filled with branches going in all directions, as well as constantly growing, forking into new branches, breaking, dropping and changing color.\u00a0 Yet somehow these creatures, with a brain often significantly smaller than a pea, can somehow find their way home. \u00a0I call that impressive!<\/p>\n<p>Bird brained?\u00a0 In my dreams, maybe\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ever been called a \u201cbird brain\u201d?\u00a0 Well, though the person using the phrase might have intended it as an insult let us look at it from a different perspective. Birds do indeed have rather small brains.\u00a0 Yet into those minuscule craniums, they have some rather impressive processing power packed\u2026 Can you even imagine the control [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/cgayling.com\/malmaxa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}