Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2022 February 20

= February 20 =

Where do birds go in a bad storm?
We just had one in England, so it got me thinking. I live by the sea, so I know what the gulls do. They either go far out to sea and ride out the storm on the water, or try to fly above the storm. Or they go inland and find an open space (less risk of flying objects), such as a field and hunker down until it's over. I think it depends on the strength and type of storm.

The seagulls are physically strong, thick plumaged birds and powerful flyers, however. What do the rest of them, do? I'm thinking of the ubiquitous urban pigeons, sparrows, crows, starlings and such. --Iloveparrots (talk) 00:37, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Some can perch in thick trees with claws that grasp automatically when muscles are relaxed. Others may gather on the leeward side of structures, vegetations, or forests. See 1 2 3 4. Most still need to feed and drink, however, especially to maintain body temperature against the weather. Sometimes they find insects hiding in the same places as they are from the storm. Sometimes they're unlucky and starve or exhaust themselves, even for seabirds who can fly with the storm or shelter within its eye as long as they keep pace with its movements. On a personal note, it's not uncommon to find birds under/inside people's domiciles around here during a major storm. GeorgiaDC (talk) 07:01, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
 * The gulls come inland. When I lived in Whitley Bay, Tyneside we could always tell when there was bad weather out at sea, the school playing fields (about a mile inland) were covered in gulls.  What's more, even if disturbed they walked, hopped or if they had to made a short flight.  They certainly did not want to be up in the air. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 08:26, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
 * There are always lots of gulls in Birmingham and we're about as far from the sea as you can get. --TrogWoolley (talk) 13:13, 21 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Some original research: at the height of the storm at midday on Friday in Hertfordshire (about 45 miles from the Essex coast), there were blue tits, great tits, nut hatches, a robin and a lesser spotted woodpecker at my birdfeeder which was swinging around violently. So I think the answer must be that they keep calm and carry on. Many garden birds are territorial, so they won't stray far from home. Alansplodge (talk) 11:43, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
 * The robin sits in a barn to keep himself warm. DuncanHill (talk) 12:16, 20 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Addressed by xkcd. CodeTalker (talk) 19:49, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

Lots of storms move in from the seas. Bad idea to try to ride them out out there. And storm systems can extend far up in the atmosphere. Think how many planes have crashed because they fly into instrument conditions up there. 74.64.73.24 (talk) 01:52, 21 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Err, since GB is an island, ALL storms move in from the sea! :-) Martin of Sheffield (talk) 08:20, 21 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Not at all. Many types of storm form directly over land.
 * Our little island is a bit too small for any of that. Nearly all of our storms are second-hand from the Atlantic. On the rare occasions that they come from Continental Europe, watch out!. Alansplodge (talk) 23:24, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Clockwork Orange, the Ludovico technique - would it actually have worked?
For anyone who didn't see the film or read the book, it involved aversion therapy. The government, in the story was experimenting with curing criminal behaviour by exposing people to graphic images of violence, rape, war, genocide and such while simultaneously pumping them full of drugs which brought upon a feeling of sickness and a "death like, paralysis state". The idea being that long term mental associations would be formed that would cause even the thought of doing such things to make it physically impossible to act upon such impulses because of permanent changes to the psyche. Like a an aggressive thought would cause the sickness and paralysis to return until the person purposefully rejected that thought, the idea being that it was now physically impossible for the subject of the experiment to commit an aggressive act.

The story was obviously a warning against such things. That it was better to be a bad man than to be compelled to "goodness" against one's will.

Question I have here, is would this have actually worked in real life? I know that attempts at aversion therapy WRT things like homosexually didn't work, so I'm curious. I'm suspecting that various governments probably tried such things over the years. Just watched the movie on DVD... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Iloveparrots (talk • contribs) 02:19, 20 February 2022 (UTC)


 * The reports on the effectiveness of aversion therapy are a mixed bunch, and controlled experiments described in sufficient detail to make them repeatable are rare. When reasonably effective at all, this appears to depend on the condition being treated. There is no body of established psychological theory that would allow one to predict the effectiveness of operant conditioning by torture for what seems to be sociopathy. --Lambiam 10:18, 20 February 2022 (UTC)


 * You may be interested in Classical Conditioning in “A Clockwork Orange” from Psychology Today. Alansplodge (talk) 11:50, 20 February 2022 (UTC)