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Columbus thought India was closer than it was because birds could be seen returning to the West Coast of England with twigs and leaves from somewhere. Portugal,
by joecot 5y ago
Columbus thought India was closer than it was because birds could be seen returning to the West Coast of England with twigs and leaves from somewhere. Portugal, Spain and anyone else he asked thought he was wrong because that would've required the Earth to be around 20k miles in circumference, when the Ancient Greeks had calculated it to be 24k miles in circumference (and they were very close in their calculations). Columbus turned out to be right that there was land there, he was just wrong about what the land was.
- crakenzak 5y ago> birds could be seen returning to the West Coast of England with twigs and leaves from somewhere. Are you saying birds were carrying twigs over the Atlantic from Americas -> Europe?? Genuinely curious as to if birds actually do that, seems pointless.
- interestica 5y ago> seems pointless I'm more wondering about the effects of seed/life transfer. Doesn't seem feasible to me.
- hadlock 5y agoEvery year or two, people decide to fly from North America to Europe in a short range Cessna. They get the extra fuel tankage package, then hop from PEI to Greenland, Greenland to Iceland, then Iceland to.... Svalbard, or maybe somewhere in the Scotish Isles. From there it's pretty standard flight operations over local bodies of water. If a Cessna can do it, that's well within a bird's migratory travel distance.
- EamonnMR 5y agoYeah but you think they'd save fuel and locally source the twigs
- scythe 5y agoPossibly not if the goal is to impress a potential mate.
- heavenlyblue 5y agoHave you just invented this or is that actually some well-known fact that birds impress potential mates this way?
- washadjeffmad 5y agoThe joke is that the Cessna fliers are doing it to collect the twigs. If you edit out 'birds', it'd be pure comedy.
- repiret 5y agoI was under the impression that was still the standard way to move GA aircraft across the Atlantic, and happened regularly.
- jcims 5y agoThat’s a walk in the park https://www.birdlife.org/worldwide/news/migration-marathons-7-unbelievable-bird-journeys https://www.birdlife.org/worldwide/news/migration-marathons-... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_tern#Distribution_and_migration https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_tern#Distribution_and...
- canadianfella 5y agoThe birds you listed don’t fly across oceans to get twigs.
- aasasd 5y agoA bit different, but IIRC some seeds spread by passing through birds' digestive tract—which sidesteps the bird's decisions on the luggage. However, I'd guess the distance travelled is much shorter in this case.
- sandworm101 5y agoIt doesn't matter whether the birds did or didn't. What matters is that people of the time thought birds were bringing in sticks from somewhere west. People believed there was a land out there. Whether or not the observations behind those beliefs are credible doesn't take away from the fact of their believing there was a land to find.
- sfblah 5y agoI mean, the real question is whether they carried any coconuts.
- riffraff 5y agoBarnacle goose do migrate from Greenland to the British isles, but I do not know if Greenland is considered north America.
- eCa 5y agoYes, Greenland is geographically in North America.
- thaumasiotes 5y agoNot a twig, but there is a recorded case of a bird making it to Europe after being shot with an African arrow. (Which it involuntarily carried with it.)
- distances 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfeilstorch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfeilstorch But that's different, I doubt birds intentionally carry anything from Africa either.
- hutzlibu 5y ago"Before migration was understood, people struggled to explain the sudden annual disappearance of birds like the white stork and barn swallow. Besides migration, some theories of the time held that they turned into other kinds of birds, mice, or hibernated underwater during the winter, and such theories were even propagated by zoologists of the time." Ok, it seems that Aristoteles believed, that birds actually transformed, but zoologist of that time at most believed, that they hibernated underwater", which seems a more solid theory, than transforming.
- thaumasiotes 5y agoTransforming isn't exactly unknown; all insects do it.
- hutzlibu 5y agoYes, but by the 18.th century, we knew that birds and mammals are a bit more complex than insects and quite shape stable.
- thaumasiotes 5y agoShape stability would be an example of being less complex than insects. And as you can see, we did not in fact know that in the 18th century. Transformations are not so easy to observe directly; they often happen e.g. underground.
- jobigoud 5y agoAnother piece of land to the west before the Americas is the Azores archipelago roughly half way between Europe and Newfoundlannd. Maybe the bird came from there. This was known to Europeans well before Colombus trip.
- hkt 5y agoThey could have been coming from Ireland too..
- kevinmchugh 5y agoIsn't the land west of England just...Ireland?
- stormdennis 5y agoIreland is an island lying less than 100 miles west of England.
- fartingflamingo 5y agoOne of the only species of birds known to be capable of transatlantic flight, and also credibly thought to regularly making the crossing [0] is the magnificent frigate bird [1]. The bird has a super interesting capability of flying on a single half of the brain. Remarkably similar to single slower core operation of a computer... [2] [0] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/274193260_Has_the_magnificent_frigatebird_Fregata_magnificens_in_the_Cape_Verde_Islands_reached_the_end_of_the_road https://www.researchgate.net/publication/274193260_Has_the_m... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnificent_frigatebird https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnificent_frigatebird [2] https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsfs.2016.0082 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsfs.2016.008...
- pedrosorio 5y agoFrom Wikipedia: “Frigatebirds (…) sometimes indulge in kleptoparasitism, harassing other birds to force them to regurgitate their food” I knew birds could regurgitate food (to feed their young) but this is something else…
- pedrosorio 5y ago> Columbus thought India was closer than it was because birds could be seen returning to the West Coast of England with twigs and leaves from somewhere The Portuguese settled the Azores before Columbus was born, so this sounds like a weird reason to believe India was closer.
- notcoolbezos 5y agoso the older civilizations like greeks or romans did not know about the americas? We've come a long way in 500 hundred years!