Small Bird Astounds Scientists With 11,200km Flight

Zeb writes "Scientists are marveling over a small female bar-tailed godwit somewhere in New Zealand who has a world record for non-stop flying — an epic 11,200 kilometers. A major international study into the birds has been published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B and it offers an explanation as to why the godwits fly so far from Alaska to New Zealand in a single bound. The birds flew non-stop for up to and covered more than 11,200km. The flight path shows the birds did not feed en route and would be unlikely to sleep." The linked Wikipedia entry claims an even longer trip record, of 11,570 kilometers.

Comments

Re:Efficiency

[maxume]

The upper limit would be their weight in calories of fat (unless you count energy that they capture from the wind or whatever as 'required'). Apparently, a large female weighs about 1.4 pounds, which is about 4,900 Calories (kcals...).

Figure in that they are made out of stuff that they won't use up and it seems likely that it is some fraction of that.

Wait...

[The Ultimate Fartkno]

They were "unlikely to sleep?"

So Joe Scientist thinks there's a remote possibility that the birds napped en route during a "nonstop, over-water route?" WTF? Mind you, I'd pay good money to see it happen, but I really can't figure out how that would work.

Re:Wait...

[daveb]

>So Joe Scientist thinks there's a remote possibility that the birds napped en route during a "nonstop, over-water route?" WTF?

I guess it depends on how you define sleep. We all can do some stuff in our sleep (breathing for e.g.). I'm no biologist but I *guess* an animal could sleep and have wings set to the same automatic response as breathing, waking up when it got tricky (turbulance etc).

But this does look interesting in terms of data delivery over avian carriers. Tiny birds ... I guess we'd be talking small MTU.

Re:Wait...

[TubeSteak]

In the animal kingdom, its quite common for creatures to go without what we would consider restful sleep. Cows sleep standing, sharks sleep while swimming, why couldn't these birds manage some form of rest while flying?

That's because they sleep differently.
Sharks' swim center is in their spinal cord, meaning they can sleep while swimming. Birds (as it seems to be understood) can put half their brain to sleep while flying, but are unable to enter REM sleep since that entails a loss of muscle tone. Birds can sleep standing up because their tendons lock their claws into position, even while asleep. Cows & horses nap while standing, but do not enter full REM sleep unless lying down, since they need muscle tone to stand.

Cows, horses and birds all need REM sleep at some point or they show signs of sleep deprivation.

All this is AFAIK and YMMV

Re:Efficiency

[maxume]

I imagine they spend a lot of that energy staying warm. Overheating is apparently a key issue for human athletes (so dumping a bunch of heat to the environment lets the birds work harder):

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.03/bemore.html

Still pretty impressive.

Re:Efficiency

[retchdog]

Yes, and allometric scaling too. I was not suggesting that birds and humans are directly comparable.

I was blown away simultaneously by two awesome facts; 1. that human-powered flight is achievable at all; 2. that it is just-barely achievable and attempting it is dangerous for even a top-notch athlete. These facts are simultaneously a signature of our human limitations and technological progress, and deserve imho to be mentioned.