Why Do Birds Sit so Evenly Spaced on a Telephone Wire?

Many of us can make simple observations of animals on an almost daily basis. There are birds around us most of the time and certainly more at certain times of the year when they may be migrating from one part of the country or world to another part of the country or world. You have probably noticed that when they land on a telephone wire they are often spaced extremely evenly apart from one another. Our first impression might be that this distance is the result of having enough room to land or to take off from the wire. Scientists watching birds however feel that birds could land in a smaller space and could certainly take off from a smaller space because they could simply jump off and spread their wings. The distance is proportionally different for small or large birds.

Most biologists now believe that the distance between the birds is actually mostly a system of reducing conflict with neighboring birds. The distance between the birds is greater than one bird could use and still reach the other bird on either side and in fact if both birds attempt a conflict it is just great enough to prevent them from hurting each other. In effect the distance is just right to prevent conflict. When you observe birds on a wire you will seldom observe any conflict but you will observe them rearrange their distance as needed.

What is particularly good about this observation is that children can leave the classroom and probably make that same observation on their way home on the school bus and can make that observation while traveling with their parents.

When setting up desks in my classroom, I observed that the distance between rows is just enough to pass things from one row to the other, but not to be aggressive from row to row. The student in a seat ahead or behind a given student is of course closer but is not able to cause much aggression and teachers are often reminding students to "face front". Although it might be better if those distances were increased somewhat, the desk top does keep some distance between students. Many teachers do have a small distance between each desk in a row and this does keep bumping of desks in a row.

It is quite likely that many social distances help to reduce potential aggression. We arrange our offices to give workers personal space we arrange seating at many gatherings to give some measure of personal distance. As thinking individuals we can overcome our instincts to some extent and certainly are able to function in close proximity on public transportation but we do have some incidents. Perhaps studying animals like birds could help us with better design of other social settings.