5 ms·
I never understood the evolutionary push to develop flight, because I thought of it as an expensive form of transport. Until this graph, which shows the cost o
by Isamu 8y ago
I never understood the evolutionary push to develop flight, because I thought of it as an expensive form of transport.
Until this graph, which shows the cost of transport to actually favor flight over terrestrial locomotion.
http://www.wprize.org/images/TuckerCostGraph.gif http://www.wprize.org/images/TuckerCostGraph.gif
- reubenswartz 8y agoAlso very handy for avoiding predators.
- cletus 8y agoAlso pretty handy for being a predator (or scavenger).
- soared 8y agoAny other info or a higher res for that graph? That totally goes against what I would've assumed! (Trains are wildly inefficient?! Swimming is more efficient than flying or running?)
- saagarjha 8y agoIf you have fins and are streamlined like a fish, I'd assume it doesn't take a whole lot of effort to move.
- mjmahone17 8y agoI think you’re reading that wrong. Trains are nearly the lowest energy/kg per unit distance travelled, as they’re in the bottom of the graph. Though it’s a bit weird for the x axis to be mass, too. Basically the y axis is a measure of efficiency. The x axis just spreads out the points so you can compare things of similar mass.
- soared 8y agoOh I was reading it wrong, thank you. Its hard to see on mobile. Glad to hear trains are efficient again though.
- dluan 8y agoI like to think of flight as an artifact of nice pleasant gusts of wind on this particular planet.
- yay_cloud2 8y agoCan someone help me understand how to read/interpret this graph? I tried to make sense of it, but I think I was only fooling myself. I need to get planed.
- vanderZwan 8y agoThe lower on the graph, the more energy efficient. The further right on the graph, the heavier the object. So the trend is towards more efficiency per kilogram for heavier animals, presumably due to square-cube law[0]. Or maybe the 3/4 scaling law[1][2]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square%E2%80%93cube_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square%E2%80%93cube_law [1] http://mathbench.umd.edu/modules/misc_scaling/page20.htm http://mathbench.umd.edu/modules/misc_scaling/page20.htm [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFFVSvAr7Wc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFFVSvAr7Wc
- xerxes777 8y agoBetter quality: https://i.imgur.com/bBJTGyE.png https://i.imgur.com/bBJTGyE.png
- balsam 8y agoOmg horses are more efficient than most cars...?!?!
- erikpukinskis 8y agoAnd yet artificial meat being cheaper than animal meat is “inevitable” due to “optimization”.
- natch 8y agoI'd like to see where the Voyager spacecraft fits on that.
- ouid 8y agowere you just unaware of how far migratory birds travel?