A Canadian researcher has discovered that some birds obey the speed limits posted for cars.

A Canadian researcher has discovered that some birds obey the speed limits posted for cars.

Just like they adapt to their environment for other survival purposes like dodging predators, they’ve learned to fly at the average rate of traffic.

It’s believed they do it to avoid colliding with cars.

One of the researchers who discovered this first became aware of the phenomenon when he was driving to his lab in France one day.

He said he noticed that the birds weren’t necessarily keeping up with him, but seemed to be moving along with the flow of the cars in general.

For a while after, the ecologist with a colleague, spent his commute timing birds with a stopwatch and keeping track of their and his travel speeds in a notebook.

He said that they definitely took to flight in relationship to how quickly the cars on the road were moving.

Higher speed limits coincided with earlier take offs, giving them an advantage in escaping the autos’ paths.

He believes that given this information, more strictly enforcing speed limits could result in improved avian conservation.