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I came to leave a snarky joke comment about "in mice?", and then I remembered that mice don't actually need parachutes because their terminal velocity is roughl
by gnicholas 3y ago
I came to leave a snarky joke comment about "in mice?", and then I remembered that mice don't actually need parachutes because their terminal velocity is roughly the same as a human using a parachute [1]. If someone actually ran the study with mice, they'd find that parachutes aren't necessary!
1: https://johnmjennings.com/can-a-mouse-survive-a-fall-from-a-high-rise/ https://johnmjennings.com/can-a-mouse-survive-a-fall-from-a-...
- King-Aaron 3y agoThat introduction Haldane quote: > You can drop a mouse down a thousand-yard mine shaft; and, on arriving at the bottom, it gets a slight shock and walks away, provided that the ground is fairly soft. A rat is killed, a man is broken, a horse splashes. "A horse splashes". That's some mental imagery right there.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ricksunny 3y agoMakes me wonder if a bunch of the world's smallest flightless mammal (a fraction of the house mouse's mass) were released at altitude, would they survive? (Not proposing that this be done but thought experiments and/or simulations): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etruscan_shrew https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etruscan_shrew
- tialaramex 3y agoAt altitude it's very cold, the shrews don't work well in the cold due to the same thing that makes them suitable for this experiment - they are very small, thus they lose heat to the environment easily. So, it's possible they freeze to death first. But yes, I imagine that if they survive the cold and aren't falling onto a hard surface (e.g. they land in grass, not a car park) they would survive. For them other than the cold a drop from 1000 metres is the same as a drop from 10 metres.
- sidewndr46 3y agoResearch is obviously warranted on the possibility of shrew blankets that can automatically detach when they touch down.
- tialaramex 3y agoI think if we're going to give shrews blankets, we should just give the shrews blankets, not conditioned on volunteering for this potentially fatal research project.
- LorenPechtel 3y agoNah, do the same thing they did for one of the Venus landers--fasten them with something that melts. Once they have reached an altitude where the temperature won't kill them the tether melts and the blanket falls away. (On Venus they did it to cut a chute because it would have made the lander fall so slowly it would have died before landing.) However, shrew blankets change the whole scenario to irrelevance--a shrew in a blanket sufficient to keep it safe has very different aerodynamic behavior than a naked shrew.
- fho 3y agoIsn't it proven that squirrels have a terminal velocity below what is harmful to them? [citation needed]
- reaperman 3y agoShrews also starve to death if they go a few hours without food, which might complicate the logistics of the experiment a bit.
- JackFr 3y ago“As god is my witness I thought turkeys could fly” https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lf3mgmEdfwg https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lf3mgmEdfwg
- dpratt71 3y agoTurkeys can fly, though. Just not the domestic ones :)
- atlasunshrugged 3y agoAnd soon Türkiye can even fly F-16s
- Earw0rm 3y agoTürkiye has had those for decades - I remember seeing one take off from Dalaman in the early 00's while I was waiting for a flight there.
- matt-attack 3y agoThanks for that. I was a bit too young to appreciate WKRP when I would see it in syndication. Great line.
- classified 3y agoThis gives "The Taming of the Shrew" an entirely new meaning.
- EGreg 3y agoThen I wonder what would happen if a Roc fell asleep midflight…
- DrIronstein 3y agoFor science. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4VmVDl8AkI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4VmVDl8AkI
- andrewl 3y agoThe J. B. S. Haldane essay he’s referring to is On Being the Right Size from 1926. It’s part of the anthology On Being the Right Size and Other Essays, which you can still find, and is still worth reading.
- Scarblac 3y agoBut what's the terminal velocity of a parachute backpack strapped to a mouse?
- jagged-chisel 3y agoRound or rectangular parachute?
- sokoloff 3y agoAfrican or European mouse?
- rad_gruchalski 3y agoWith a parachute deployed, or not?
- m3047 3y agoBellbottoms or drip coat?
- fragmede 3y agoAlso correlation is not causation. Just because some people jumping from planes have parachutes doesn't mean that all people jumping from planes have parachutes.
- mjburgess 3y agoFeels more like an ecological fallacy issue than a post-hoc
- dtgriscom 3y agoWearing parachutes cause people to jump out of planes.
- bombcar 3y agoSurgeon General's Warning: parachutes have been known to the state of California to cause people to jump out of perfectly working planes.
- LorenPechtel 3y agoYup, *highly* skewed sample, we can't draw conclusions. The number of people who have willingly jumped from planes without desiring death is tiny. The number who have survived is even lower. (Yes, people jump without desiring death. Death by splat is better than death by fire.)
- londons_explore 3y agoThe fact that mice don't appear to deliberately jump off high things as a way to get down tells me that they probably do get hurt... Just because they don't fall super fast doesn't mean they don't get injured because they don't have as much distance to "drop and roll" like a human does.
- meindnoch 3y ago>The fact that mice don't appear to deliberately jump off high things as a way to get down tells me that they probably do get hurt... Isn't this how bats have evolved though?
- mannykannot 3y agoNot directly. There was one or more intermediary stage, probably jumping between trees. Outside my window, the squirrels are busy doing just that. I have a vague recollection of reading that most squirrels have evidence of trauma from falling, such as healed bone fractures.
- pfdietz 3y agoFlying squirrels show an intermediate stage of such an evolution process. Evolution always involves intermediate stages. Even if a large discrete change could occur, fine tuning it is an extended incremental process. If you go to the Cornell Ornithology Lab feeder cam and scan through the feed at night, you will find flying squirrels at the feeder. They show signs of nocturnal adaptation, another connection to bats. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N609loYkFJo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N609loYkFJo
- KineticLensman 3y agoThe grey squirrels in my UK garden routinely make what we call the 'leap of death' between two trees whose upper branches are a few feet apart, at different heights. I've seen two falls - one because the target branch snapped when the squirrel landed, the other during a high-speed chase where one of the squirrels apparently mis-jumped. In both cases the squirrels fell into lower level bushes and disappeared (no subsequent bodies). It's not unusual to see a squirrel with one one useless leg but still managing to feed and get around, so I can quite believe that they can recover from a broken limb given sufficient time. * * * We also had a pheasant who routinely visited the garden and one day showed up with a broken leg, that survived for ages before eventually disappearing. Initially he sat quietly in the undergrowth but started hopping around and doing short flights (with clumsy landings). I put out bird seed for him and he incredibly quickly learned to hoot and flap outside my back door when he was hungry. He once followed me into my shed when he was expecting feeding and had to be shoo'd out.
- rob74 3y agoNot in mice, but in stationary aircraft sitting on the tarmac - so even less useful than a study using mice.
- LorenPechtel 3y agoIt was actually done to point out the problem with studying the wrong thing.
- ksherlock 3y agoIn the first few days of their life, wood ducklings jump out of their nest and fall to the ground. If their nest is in man-made bird-box, that's probably a 4 foot drop into the water. If it's a natural nest in a tree, that might be a 50 or 60 foot drop onto the ground.
- marcosdumay 3y agoFrom the article: > Parachute use did not significantly reduce death or major injury I really recommend reading. It is a very funny thing until you realize you've read a few dozen serious articles, well received by a large community (some times even the academic community) with nearly the same kind of arguments.
- kelseyfrog 3y agoThe cuteness factor of mice with little parachutes might be worth it alone though!