What Birds Know About Fractal Geometry

Fractal dimension is not a set of buzzwords, but a useful concept in both mathematics and technology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal [wikipedia.org]

Fractals have many uses http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal#Applications_in_technology [wikipedia.org] It is a perfectly reasonable hypothesis that birds recognize the fractal dimension of plumage in their own species. Conflating this with "being able to compute a fractal" is ignorant. Some birds are known to get information about magnetic fields through their visual channel. This does not mean they are solving Maxwell's equations.

It is possible to extract fractal dimension information from images. Typing in "fractal dimension image detection" into Google Scholar results in over 25000 references. If academics have figured out how to do this then evolution may also embody these concepts.

Posting on Slashdot is an opportunity to share knowledge and learn things. Unfortunately far to many people who post here show that they are ignorant and arrogant. I call them the Slashdot Pundits.

Just because you know one thing does not mean that things you haven't heard of are wrong. With Google and the like, it's easy to fact check. On this topic so far all we have seen is woefully uninformed people criticizing academics and making fools of themselves. I would think that shear embarrassment would tend to eliminate this kind of drivel, but I guess if you are stupid enough to make such uninformed statements, you are also incapable of understanding how bad it makes you look.

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/330LmuOS_ZQ/story01.htm

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