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With ships, birds find an easier way to travel
- mindracer 4y agoMy dad used to work on oil carriers in the North Sea, he said an owl had stowed away and nested on one of bouys near a field. The place was covered with skeletons of birds
- sicher 4y agoInteresting. Related: I’ve seen pigeons using the subway to travel here in Stockholm. (https://www.thelocal.se/20111110/37278/ https://www.thelocal.se/20111110/37278/)
- unxdfa 4y agoThey do that in London too. Strangely they seem to actually know where they are going.
- spywaregorilla 4y agothat seems like the opposite of strange
- hinkley 4y agopigeons are smarter than they look. Not corvid smart so far as I know, but clever birds. It's part of why they're so ubiquitous.
- bcl 4y agoJust don't let the Pigeon drive the bus! https://pigeonpresents.com/books/dont-let-the-pigeon-drive-the-bus-20th-anniversary-edition/ https://pigeonpresents.com/books/dont-let-the-pigeon-drive-t...
- ibn_khaldun 4y agoThis was a delightful read. I wonder what the consequences will be
- nerdponx 4y agoWe've been sailing around the world for 500+/- years now. Moreso in the past than we used to. Presumably the consequences have already shown themselves.
- em-bee 4y agothere are more than 300000 ships traveling today: https://www.marinetraffic.com/ https://www.marinetraffic.com/ i don't think we ever had that many before than a few decades
- mastax 4y agoIt also seems likely that navigation is much more standardized. Ships follow more regular paths, so it may be easier to jump from ship to ship (at least compared to the 1700s or earlier).
- MagicMoonlight 4y agoThey’re birds, they can’t exactly do much
- tough 4y agoI was once in a transatlantic cruise, wild how birds would appear on deck randomly (probably coming from other ships) in the middle of the ocean.
- 323 4y agoNature, uh, finds a way... Related: > Storks give up migrating to live on landfill in Spain https://phys.org/news/2022-07-storks-migrating-landfill-spain.html https://phys.org/news/2022-07-storks-migrating-landfill-spai...
- supernova87a 4y agoI wonder if, even if the bird doesn't take the boat for a long distance (i.e. cutting off time spent flapping), just having the ability to rest and recover in the middle of the ocean provides it the boost to keep on going. Or some safety factor. Just like Midway Atoll for us...hah.
- p1mrx 4y agoLanding and taking off again doesn't obviously conserve energy. Midway has fuel, but there's probably not much accessible food on a cargo ship. I wonder if birds are smart enough to notice which direction the ship is moving?
- banana_giraffe 4y agoLanding and taking off could be advantageous if the weather is bad, since the rest can allow the bird to wait out the bad weather. Also, I wonder how many of these birds are adapting to finding food on the ships.
- cmontella 4y agoThis is the amazing evolutionary advantage of albatrosses; they fly using a technique called dynamic soaring, which allows them to extract kinetic energy from the wind. It's the same concept really as moving sidewalks in the airport, so their gliding heartrate is about the same as when they're resting on the beach or water. This is what allows them to fly such massive distances across the ocean!
- chickenimprint 4y agoHow does that make sense thermodynamically? Where's the gradient? Do they fly at the boundary between different wind speeds?
- cmontella 4y ago> Where's the gradient? Do they fly at the boundary between different wind speeds? At the surface of the water, windspeed is lower than at higher altitudes, so that's where the gradient is. If you watch an albatross soaring over water, you'll watch it dive so low its wingtip touches the water surface, and then it'll climb in altitude, before turning to dive again. Here's a good diagram of the whole process: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sameh-Eisa/publication/325217254/figure/fig1/AS:627553081503744@1526631722598/Dynamic-soaring-cycle.png https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sameh-Eisa/publication/...
- lalos 4y agoIf you zoom-out a ship is just a small island, a rock or something floating around in the water that can be used as a pit-stop. If birds evolved to judge something as useful to rest - these birds just see a higher quantity of pit stops. Would be interesting if they lower the required calories to make the trip beforehand as time passes.
- kuhewa 4y agoContainer ships steam at ~20 kts. If they need to get somewhere and are picking these pit-stops at random as if they are stationary, about half the time it would be a rather maladaptive choice.
- nohuck13 4y agoBlackburnian warbler in Cornwall: https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/uk-twitchers-flock-tiny-island-25279182 https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/uk-twitchers-floc...
- worik 4y agoInteresting. Especially the flock of bird watchers... https://i2-prod.birminghammail.co.uk/incoming/article25279207.ece/ALTERNATES/s615b/0_hundreds-of-twi-902196.jpg https://i2-prod.birminghammail.co.uk/incoming/article2527920...
- daverol 4y agoConsider this Osprey taking a rest on a boat during migration from the UK to Spain - https://twitter.com/sachadench/status/1569801627757838338 https://twitter.com/sachadench/status/1569801627757838338
- heikkilevanto 4y agoRats also travel by ships, reaching islands where they have not been before. I think even the old Romans mentioned cats traveling on their ships. Not to mention the various pathogens that traveled with the people on ocean crossing ships, causing severe epidemics among natives not used to such.
- leeoniya 4y ago"think this makes us lazy?" "nah, we're still in the V shape" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPLK1zvPb-U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPLK1zvPb-U
- drewmol 4y agoFor those wondering, some of these birds can fly over 5 miles high. From 5 miles above sea level, the distance to horizon is 200 miles. From 5 miles high, you could see the tip of mount Everest above the horizon from 410 miles. Great snipes can fly thousands of miles in one continuous 60-90 hour flight. https://www.inverse.com/science/migratory-birds-flying-ocean https://www.inverse.com/science/migratory-birds-flying-ocean https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/earth-curvature https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/earth-curvature
- dietr1ch 4y agoand what's a mile again? From your article, (which uses metric), > One of the great snipes stayed above 8,000 meters (4.97 miles) for more than five hours one day, rising to a maximum altitude of around 8,700 meters (5.41 miles). This is the highest altitude ever recorded for an identified migratory bird. At 8km high it's easier to believe that they'd see ~660km away (410mi), although I don't know if weather, pollution or some distortions get in the way.