I saved a PNG image to a bird
55 comments
·July 28, 2025aflag
alterom
>I thought he'd transmit a PNG over a modem, get a bird to memorise that and play it back.
That's essentially what he has done. Except he did the modulation/demodulation with audio software (and, technically, stored a monochrome bitmap, not a PNG).
Dial-up modems encode data in audio-frequency. Later modems used phase-shift keying¹, but the very early ones used frequency-shift keying², which is essentially encoding data in a frequency graph - i.e., drawing a line in a spectrum analyzer.
Drawing a bird in a spectrum analyzer is packing much more data than that; it's like playing several of those streams at once.
The bird has shown itself to be capable of remembering and reproducing multiplexed frequency-keyed streams.
>With enough birds I imagine you can store quite a bit of data. Takes saving to the cloud to another level.
Literally a point made in the video³ at 18:34.
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¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-shift_keying
frollogaston
It's analog though. Presumably the shape of the image matters, like horizontal lines are easier than vertical, it's not just a bitmap. He made the point of how many KB you can store in the song, but is it right? There are different conceivable ways to store binary data in that. I have no idea how efficient it'd be to get something 99% reliable.
alterom
> He made the point of how many KB you can store in the song, but is it right?
It's a decent Fermi estimate¹ :)
We also don't know how many songs we can get the bird to memorize for us.
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Balgair
Amazing!
The product recommendations at the end are gold too! A 'hacker' spirit there.
In terms of signal length, can you store the images/data in a flock of birds too? I wonder what the RAID set-up of a flock of starlings is like? I'm thinking something like the Tines in Fire Upon the Deep
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fire_Upon_the_Deep
More crazily, can you get these data signals to be Turing complete? I know that not really what data is like in a vocalization pattern, but can you manage to get the birds' vocalizations to do logic of some sort and change patterns in more than a non-entropic way?
Crazy cool stuff!
data-ottawa
Let's try a light weight Blockchain on a swarm of starlings.
CobrastanJorji
What a ride. I kept waiting for the punchline to be something dumb, like "we fed a USB drive to a bird" or "we tied a recording to a bird," and then when I realized what they were gonna do, I was shocked. It should have been obvious, but it was very clever! Really cool.
alterom
>It should have been obvious
It's not obvious at all that birds are able to reproduce multiplexed frequency-keyed streams with enough precisions to draw freaking pictures in spectrum analyzer graphs.
Humans can barely control their voices to nail one frequency. Badly.
These birds are capable of reproducing the output of several sound sources producing sounds at once, with near-perfect time and frequency precision.
cluckindan
They even reproduce the reverb of the space they’re in when they hear sounds.
m-hodges
Having some hilarious thoughts about copyright.
Bird law in this country is not governed by reason.
progbits
Time to teach all local birds the AACS key :)
alterom
The video shows that there are many ways to do that :)
Now, if we figure out how to convince the birds it's a predator distress call (which, if you think about it, it kind of is), we can probably get it to persist across generations.
woodrowbarlow
this is what i've been wondering. is it feasible for a single diligent person to embed a message in an entire population of birds, in a manner that will persist generations? that's what i'd call a pretty good prank.
strangattractor
Ben's content is amazing in general. He has also built an sound camera and showed how to watermark recordings to confuse AI. Keep it up Ben!!
anton-c
Just watched this last night. That bird "the mouth" is beautiful and incredible. Love Benn Jordan's insane content.
If you watch some of the other vids it does a perfect r2d2 impression, don't recall if it did it in Benn's.
schindlabua
Also he's literally The Flashbulb of 2000s IDM fame. Some people are really just good at everything.
alterom
At some time in the video he's casually played a groove on the piano to back the birds for a couple of second, then stopped ("Wait, what am I doing") :)
You can also see his modular setup in the background.
I didn't know of him until today. Instantly, a new inspiration.
nashashmi
I came here for the tl;dw comments. :(
Lammy
Just skip to here: https://youtu.be/hCQCP-5g5bo?t=1019
AceJohnny2
The video covers a wide range of topics related to birds and audio. The title topic is actually only a small segment of the whole video, arguably not the most interesting one!
Among other things, he also covers (lightly) bird vocal anatomy, audio "cameras", birding apps & equipment.
haunter
I hate modern Youtube that now every single "serious" topic video is +30 mins length. 10 years ago we were perfectly fine with 10 mins stuff but of course algorithms and advertising and nowadays most Youtuber is pushing longer and longer videos as if we are watching peak evening television reporting...
any1
Drawing into the spectrogram is a fun trick. I would really like to know how much data you can store in that bird using some digital modulation method such as FSK (frequency shift keying).
There could even be multiple carriers in the signal.
It would be even cooler if the bird were to preserve phase. Then you could use PSK!
alterom
> I would really like to know how much data you can store in that bird using some digital modulation method such as FSK (frequency shift keying).
The video shows the bird capable of remembering and reproducing 5-10 frequency graphs simultaneously (which you'd need to draw a picture), so you can multiplex those.
> There could even be multiple carriers in the signal.
Or same carrier, but different sets of frequency keys for each stream.
> It would be even cooler if the bird were to preserve phase. Then you could use PSK!
Maybe they do, someone should ping Ben to test that :D
drmpeg
Here's what 4096 carriers looks like.
cluckindan
A totally new meaning for carrier pigeon.
jonny_eh
We need a new RFC
alterom
RFC 1149 (IP over Avian Carriers, 1990)¹ needs a 2025 update :D
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joshmarlow
Fun (?) fact - with this protocol you could use a trained Hawk as a firewall.
alterom
Definitely a fun fact :D
bigbuppo
Seriously. Major security implications here as there's a potential for replay attacks.
isege
lmao
flysand7
Watched this video yesterday, and damn, it's really delightful watching experts make content about things they are passionate about. This love and passion is contageous, and even me, who up to this point knew almost nothing about birds has gained a new appreciation and love for these creatures. The fact that they can copy sounds is kinda incredible, and makes me want to listen more to them singing.
kyrofa
Wow, my worlds are colliding right now-- although seeing Benn on HN in retrospect shouldn't be that surprising. Go check out his music, The Flashbulb, he's one of my favorite artists.
clickety_clack
Wow, I have not been on YouTube in a long time. Couldn’t skim through the video. So many ads.
Seems like a cool idea based on the comments here though.
I thought he'd transmit a PNG over a modem, get a bird to memorise that and play it back. I think with the right format it should be possible to do that. With enough birds I imagine you can store quite a bit of data. Takes saving to the cloud to another level.