[HN Gopher] Bar-tailed Godwits regularly travel more than 7,000 ...
___________________________________________________________________
Bar-tailed Godwits regularly travel more than 7,000 miles non-stop
Author : mcenedella
Score : 426 points
Date : 2021-11-15 10:13 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.audubon.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.audubon.org)
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Animal equivalent of ultramarathons. Only difference between
| animals and human athletes being that animals are doing it on
| daily basis without trying to beat records or win something.
| rudian wrote:
| The surprising part is that we have a battery that lasts that
| long for tracking "in real time" and doesn't weigh the bird down.
| How's that possible?
|
| The article mentions that is solar-powered, but even then how
| much power could it generate?
| F00Fbug wrote:
| Not much, but the design of these things is incredible. I spent
| 20 years managing the operations for the ground processing of
| this data in North America. We worked closely with the
| transmitter manufacturers to certify them for use with the
| system (https://www.argos-system.org).
|
| Microwave Telemetry builds the smallest ones:
| https://www.microwavetelemetry.com/solar_ptts The design and
| manufacture of these devices is incredible. The guy behind the
| company is an incredible engineer (and a nice guy)!
| Reason077 wrote:
| The tracking device is solar powered so presumably can get away
| with a very small battery. They mention in the article that it
| goes offline at times while the bird is resting because it can
| be covered by feathers which prevent it from getting enough
| sunlight.
|
| That said, as if it wasn't impressive enough that Godwits can
| fly over 8000 miles non-stop, it's even more amazing that they
| can do it while burdened with a tracking device!
| joe__f wrote:
| I don't know how much this type of bird weighs, but I imagine
| 5g for the tracker is a small percentage of its overall
| weight
| jacquesm wrote:
| 4 Kg is only about 5% of the weight of an average adult
| male. Now imagine that weight tied to different places on
| your body. On your back it might not be a big issue, but
| glued to the tip of one finger or maybe tied to one of your
| toes it could effectively disable or immobilize you.
|
| The weight isn't the whole story, it's how it is placed
| that matters as well.
| nickpeterson wrote:
| It's a matter of weight ratios, how can a 5oz bird carry
| a 1lb coconut?
| bregma wrote:
| It grasps it by the husk.
| kijin wrote:
| Distance of 70 feet or 7,000 miles?
| OJFord wrote:
| An African or a European bird?
| gbil wrote:
| from the link
|
| >The transmission technology will continue to be of great
| importance, as sensors weighing five grams are still too
| heavy for many animal species: 70 percent of bird species
| and 65 percent of mammal species, not to mention amphibians
| or insects, cannot be equipped with sensors using the
| current technology. The next generation of Icarus sensors
| will therefore weigh just one gram.
|
| This is just amazing
| onychomys wrote:
| And the really bonkers thing about many birds is that the
| single gram will _still_ be a sizeable fraction of their
| total body weight. Chickadees and nuthatches (and other
| birds of that size) weigh somewhere between 10 and 15
| grams, usually. Zebra finches are about the same. It 'll
| be a really long time before we can put sensors on those!
| jfk13 wrote:
| According to https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-
| wildlife/wildlife-guides/b..., the bar-tailed godwit weighs
| around 230-450g. So the tracker would add somewhere around
| 1-2% of its weight.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Between 200 and 600 g according to
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar-tailed_godwit#Description
| danw1979 wrote:
| Article mentions a solar panel on the tracker, which seems
| positioned to receive charge when the bird is on the wing,
| because when the bird landed it's feathers covered it up.
| tda wrote:
| > Since landing in New South Wales, 4BBRW's tracker has
| intermittently gone offline, which is common as birds rest
| because their feathers can cover the solar charging panel.
|
| So surprising you can run a GPS on a solar panel of about 1cm2
| (my estimate), see picture in article
| foxfluff wrote:
| There are solar powered wristwatches with GPS.
| shellfishgene wrote:
| The Icarus trackers weigh 5 grams.
| https://www.icarus.mpg.de/28874/sensor-animals-tracking See the
| 'technolgy' sub headings in the menu for more info.
| georgekollias wrote:
| What do they eat and drink during that time?
| Jensson wrote:
| They don't, they burn fat and muscles during the flight and
| lose a lot of body mass.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| Birds don't sweat, so they needn't drink as much as us.
| culopatin wrote:
| Am I the only one trying to wrap my head around the energy
| storage and sleep patterns of this bird?
| _puk wrote:
| Frigate birds power nap [0] so they can stay aloft for weeks,
| and other birds have been seen to sleep with half their brain
| at a time [1].
|
| Pretty cool stuff! Have to wonder when this evolved, and
| whether it could be mimicked.
|
| 0: https://www.audubon.org/news/scientists-finally-have-
| evidenc...
|
| 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unihemispheric_slow-
| wave_sle...
| Markoff wrote:
| they are just switching between parts of brain, essentially
| running autopilot, sharks do same, soe it's not really THAT
| impressive for bird to stay in flight for extended periods, 10
| days is nothing spectacular
| standardUser wrote:
| I immediately smelled bullshit in the headline because surely
| they don't mean non-stop in the literal sense. An animal has to
| eat! But no, I was wrong, these birds fly 8+ days in a row
| without sleep or food (or a complete mental breakdown,
| presumably). Though I do find it odd the article doesn't discuss
| the food and sleep issue more.
| jychang wrote:
| The bird isn't flapping for 8+ days straight, burning calories.
| They're soaring with their wings locked, more akin to a glider.
|
| With lower energy use, lower food consumption is needed. No
| animal can actively move their muscles 8+ days straight without
| refueling.*
|
| *[Citation needed], because nature loves to prove me wrong
| dr_orpheus wrote:
| "Unlike albatross or other long-flying seabirds, godwits are
| active flyers, not gliders--their wings are moving the whole
| time."
|
| The article seems to indicate that they are, in fact,
| flapping their wings the whole time.
| adamrezich wrote:
| how in the world do their bodies store so much energy?
| dr_orpheus wrote:
| Yeah, that part I'm not clear on. Some birds do rely
| mostly on airborne insects for food. Another article I
| linked in this thread had a note that swifts primarily
| eat airborne insects and can stay aloft for 10 months at
| a time.
| [deleted]
| davide_benato wrote:
| mcenedella from TheLadders?
| omosubi wrote:
| There's an excellent episode of In Our Time from the BBC about
| bird migrations - absolutely fascinating stuff -
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08wmk5j
| streamofdigits wrote:
| Incredible navigation skills too, though not quite "perfect" the
| paths seem to have occasionally some fairly large deviations
|
| Nature's benchmarks for economy of resources are still so very
| far ahead from anything human made
| kvgr wrote:
| Looks like after to Fiji it wanted to go to New Zealand and
| decided mid flight to go to Australia :)
| PedroBatista wrote:
| Probably because of New Zealand closing airspace due to
| COVID.
| boudin wrote:
| Could deviations be weather driven as well?
| streamofdigits wrote:
| could be, but it seems the correction signal only kicks in
| once there is a threshold discrepancy. I guess studying many
| such tracks could give some hints and correlated with what is
| known about the physiology of how these birds orient.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| The waves down there didn't look familiar, so the bird
| decided to go back a little.
| streamofdigits wrote:
| or maybe there was something in the air that didn't quite
| feel right :-)
| lordnacho wrote:
| > setting the world record for the longest continual flight by
| any __land bird__ by distance
|
| What do they mean by land bird?
| diroussel wrote:
| Sea birds can fly for longer. For instance an albatross.
| sva_ wrote:
| I imagine compared to water birds, such as seagulls.
| goodcanadian wrote:
| One that does not land on water.
| WithinReason wrote:
| As opposed to air birds
| callesgg wrote:
| What type of tracking tech would they be using? Satellite uplink?
| F00Fbug wrote:
| https://www.argos-system.org
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Tangent: monarch butterflies routinely fly across the Atlantic
| Ocean, which (given their relatively tiny size and fragility)
| strikes me as an equivalent feat.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| I wonder if their size is not an advantage: if they start high
| enough they can basically be pushed by the winds with a very
| limited effort.
|
| Nothing scientific here, just a casual comment.
| q1w2 wrote:
| They have a different extreme low-density advantage that they
| only need to stay up, and the wind blows them over.
| bedobi wrote:
| wtf
|
| I know this isn't an insightful comment, but
|
| wtf
| noneeeed wrote:
| I'm constantly astonished by birds. They seem to be the ultimate
| evolutionary optimisers, which makes sense given their
| requirements. They seem to be incredibly efficeient with energy,
| weight and space.
|
| It's not just physical feats like this, but the way some of the
| the corvids pack incredible brains in a volume and mass
| significantly less than other non-flying animals with roughly
| similar levels of intellegence (although I appreciate that cross-
| species intelligence comparisons are always difficult).
| hawk_ wrote:
| indeed
|
| > males weigh 190-400 g (6.7-14.1 oz), while females weigh
| 260-630 g (9.2-22.2 oz);
|
| quite efficient, sentient automaton. on the other hand the
| tracker we built keeps going offline because it needs constant
| recharging :-)
| richardw wrote:
| And the bird has to carry the tracker around. Put a tracker
| on me for 9000 miles and you'll get some complaints.
| damagednoob wrote:
| And these are the evolutionary traits that won. It's incredible
| to me to imagine all the configurations of different traits
| nature threw at this problem and all the sentience that was
| lost in the process.
| panick21_ wrote:
| All animals that survived to this day are the ultimate
| evolutionary optimisers that is why they still exists.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| Evolution isn't "one and done", so really _most_ animals that
| survived today are _the current ultimate version of
| themselves_. Some animals are in the middle of evolutionary
| leaps, and some individuals might have "bad" versions of
| certain genes are a result.
| jasonhansel wrote:
| It's things like this that remind you that birds evolved from
| dinosaurs (in fact, recently birds have been described as just
| a kind of dinosaur, the only kind to survive the asteroid
| impact).
| mig39 wrote:
| I've heard the term "non-avian dinosaur" a lot these days.
| kijin wrote:
| When the climate turns against you, efficiency is the one
| trait that helps you survive with limited resources.
|
| The big heavy dinos didn't have that. Nor did the
| Neanderthals.
|
| The problem with efficiency is that when you have more than
| enough resources, you get obese very quickly. Like chickens
| and modern humans. :)
| marlone93 wrote:
| Lots of people trying to compare our 10k-year old technology (200
| years if we talk about machines, even less if we talk about
| robots) with something that evolved basically with billions of
| trial/errors in millions of years.
|
| At this point we should check which animal can travel as fast as
| a shuttle and go back and forth to the moon.
| robocat wrote:
| Is that a trick question: because humans are animals?!
| tpmx wrote:
| How did they make sure it didn't rest on a a ship or something?
| rq1 wrote:
| What's the record here? For instance swifts can fly for 10+
| months without landing.
| FR10 wrote:
| I just looked that up, very impressive:
|
| > "They feed in the air, they mate in the air, they get nest
| material in the air," [0]
|
| > "They can land on nest boxes, branches, or houses, but they
| can't really land on the ground." That's because their wings
| are too long and their legs are too short to take off from a
| flat surface.
|
| [0] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/swift-
| bir...
| jacquesm wrote:
| Albatros: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-
| amazing-al...
| kabes wrote:
| No it's the Swift. The albatross does land on water, so
| that's why the article states: without touching land...
| jacquesm wrote:
| Water isn't land though, is it?
| dredmorbius wrote:
| That somewhat depends on precisely how cold the water in
| question is.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Hehe, good point. But for me 'land' means soil, though
| I'll take landing on an ice floe or the North Pole as
| land for the purposes of this discussion. I'm not sure
| how far North/South the Albatros' habitat extends, but it
| wouldn't surprise me at all if they went there too.
| stef25 wrote:
| Curious about how / when they sleep
| Markoff wrote:
| they sleep during flight, I think some/many fish/birds can
| switch off parts of brain to be esentially sleeping while
| autopilot works, sharks for instance, I guess for lowly
| humans closest comparison would be sleep walking
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| I am not sure about these birds but some migrating birds reduce
| their brain sizes significantly during these trips. This saves a
| lot of energy.
| panick21_ wrote:
| People might be interesting in some research from NASA about how
| Birds fly compared to planes and why they are more efficient.
|
| Albion H. Bowers was the Chief Scientist at NASA's Neil A.
| Armstrong Flight Research Center published some fantastic
| research:
|
| On Wings of the Minimum Induced Drag: Spanload Implications for
| Aircraft and Birds
|
| (https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20160003578)
|
| but here are some videos that get the message across:
|
| 2014:
|
| NASA's Albion H. Bowers - "Why Birds Don't Have Vertical Tails" -
| AMA EXPO 2014 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoT2upDbdUg)
|
| 2018:
|
| "Prandtl Wing Minimum Drag Update" - Al Bowers
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCwtcDNB15E)
|
| 2021:
|
| Fly with Birds: Meeting with Albion H. Bowers
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6oVXPkTnss)
|
| We could massively improve our efficiency by adopting this. Its a
| shame that we are flying as much as we do and using so much
| unnecessary fuel.
| totetsu wrote:
| Got sick of the kite surfers in NZ and moved to Australia?
| mirekrusin wrote:
| There is also nice "oh shit, wrong way" squiggle after Fiji.
| daviddaviddavid wrote:
| For anyone wanting to fly along with the birds, the movie Winged
| Migration is truly stunning. It is shot in a very unique way
| where you really feel as though you're flying with the various
| birds. (Same director has another great movie called
| Microcosmos.)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pc_qpk2d-ao
| pytlicek wrote:
| Just WOW! I am very fascinated by how nature has perfected it, in
| some aspects.
| akudha wrote:
| The article says they don't glide, they are actively flying the
| whole time. That is mind boggling.
|
| Don't they need sleep?
|
| How do they know to start on the exact same day every year? Fly
| to the exact same place?
|
| I am a bit jealous of the scientists who get to work with such
| amazing creatures :)
| anentropic wrote:
| Pure guess, but maybe they recognise position of stars in the
| sky? that could provide both calendrical and navigational
| utility
| krylon wrote:
| I think I read something about some birds being able to sleep
| with only one hemisphere of their brain at a time, similar to
| dolphins. The common swift often spends months at a time
| without touching ground.
|
| And lots of birds perform marvelous feats of long-range
| navigation, storks, for example, travel thousands of
| kilometers each year to return to their nest for breeding.
|
| They are amazing creatures.
| diroussel wrote:
| I would suppose that they don't "know" they just feel
| compelled.
|
| There are dragon flies that migrate from India to Africa. It
| takes three generations to complete the round trip. So how do
| they know? It must be just a feeling.
|
| I guess that a long time ago when India and Aftrica were
| adjacent parts of Gondwana land, the migration must have been
| quite short. But as the continents drifted apart the dragoon
| flies had to adapt to the longer route.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| Isn't it the same with Monarch Butterflies, they make the
| trip from Canada to Mexico and it also includes a few
| breeding cycles.
| boudin wrote:
| It is still possible to be knowledge that is passed on from
| generation to generation one way or another.
| jcun4128 wrote:
| Yeah the design doesn't even seem like a gliding type eg.
| albatross or something. 10 days, what is its metabolism like.
| Steltek wrote:
| Meta: The title of this post was different earlier this morning.
| The change doesn't quite conform to the rules, using a
| subtitle(?) rather than the actual title. But more interestingly,
| the bizarre bird name and lack of context actually makes it seem
| more clickbait-y, not less. Perhaps a title change striving to
| follow the letter of the law but not the spirit of it?
|
| Caveat: I'm not arguing for another change or passing judgment. I
| just thought the change itself was notable. And bird names are
| ridiculous.
| dang wrote:
| We often switch to subtitles when they're less baity. It's a
| legit source for an HN title. In this case I'd say it's far
| less baity than "These Mighty Shorebirds Keep Breaking Flight
| Records--And You Can Follow Along", which is kind of
| embarrassing.
|
| I agree with you that "bar-tailed godwit" is an invitation to
| dumb internet jokes (a couple popped into my mind as soon as I
| saw that), but so far the thread is mercifully free of them.
|
| p.s. Here's a past explanation about all this, with links to
| others: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22932244.
| retube wrote:
| How does the tracking work? So the birds are carrying a GPS chip?
| How is the location transmitted back to the researchers? - they
| are over the pacific for most of the flight
| F00Fbug wrote:
| Not GPS - the locations are derived from measuring doppler
| shift over a handful of messages. If you know where the
| spacecraft is, you can derive the location of the transmitter.
| On a good day you can get 100-400m accuracy. Not close to GPS,
| but good enough for tracking animals. I managed the North
| American data center for www.argos-system.org for many years.
| raisedbyninjas wrote:
| Yes it carries a GPS receiver and transmits to a satellite
| periodically. Most of the time, most of the tracker package is
| turned off. It only weighs 5 grams.
| idoubtit wrote:
| It may be the longest distance recorded for a continual flight by
| any land bird, but it's not an extraordinary performance.
|
| For instance, common swifts can flight continuously for months.
| They obviously accumulate a huge distance during this time, even
| when they're not migrating. They live in Eurasia, from Lisbon to
| Vladivostok. And they winter in Africa, south of Congo. I think
| Vladivostok-Harare is a longer trip than Alaska-Australia, but
| it's probably hard to put sensors on small birds during their
| migration.
| darrenf wrote:
| Came here to say something similar. Common swifts are amazing.
| Quoting Wikipedia:
|
| > _Except when nesting, swifts spend their lives in the air,
| living on the insects caught in flight; they drink, feed, and
| often mate and sleep on the wing. Some individuals go 10 months
| without landing. No other bird spends as much of its life in
| flight. Contrary to common belief, swifts can take flight from
| level ground. Their maximum horizontal flying speed is 111.6 km
| /h. Over a lifetime they can cover millions of kilometers._
| ptha wrote:
| I'm guessing it's being called extraordinary, because the
| godwits are flapping continually rather than gliding to take a
| break, from article:
|
| _Unlike albatross or other long-flying seabirds, godwits are
| active flyers, not gliders--their wings are moving the whole
| time. "It just beggars belief, really," Riegen says. "I mean,
| though I 've known that for decades now, I still find it hard
| to imagine how anything can keep up that sort of effort
| 24-hours a day, without taking a break."_
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| Of course, _the heart_ is a muscle many animals possess, that
| never rests.
| 83457 wrote:
| Not gliding any/much is amazing.
| lifeformed wrote:
| Amazing that our state of the art technology is a fragile device
| that can fly for 30 minutes, while this ancient entity can fly
| nonstop, deriving energy from bugs and water, fly through storms,
| self repair any damage, has global navigation and local
| avoidance, and even can self replicate.
|
| It's humbling to realize how far off our technology is in certain
| areas from competing even with insects.
| imtringued wrote:
| Building small robots is a pain. The commercially available
| actuators are huge and not very powerful if they don't come
| with a gearbox.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's not the reason they're a pain. They are a pain because
| friction doesn't scale down nicely.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I once read this bit and your comment reminds me of it: "As
| life, cockroaches absolutely suck, but as technology they
| excel".
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| Though to be fair to technology, it's amazing how it can track
| a bird 8000 miles on just solar power, giving us a view of the
| world no other bird will ever really have at the moment.
| postalrat wrote:
| Biology is basically alien technology that we've been studying
| but can't figure out how it works.
| dataflow wrote:
| Let's give the technology 60 million years to be perfected and
| then compare.
|
| P.S. This aircraft flew from Japan to Hawaii in 118 hours
| solely powered by solar energy
| https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/solar-impulse-2-br...
|
| (n.b. this isn't to dispute the awesomeness of birds.)
| barney54 wrote:
| Yes, and then they had to replace the batteries that suffered
| "irreversible damage" and that took several months to fix.
| These birds just keep on going.
| [deleted]
| Kye wrote:
| Unless they hit one of our earlier attempts to survive long
| enough to be as good as birds. I _hope_ new wind farms are
| built with awareness of bird migration in mind.
|
| https://www.fws.gov/birds/bird-enthusiasts/threats-to-
| birds/...
| kijin wrote:
| Self-replication helps a lot. Birds suffer irreversible
| damage all the time. They just spam the world with more
| birds to replace the dead ones.
| hammock wrote:
| I'm sure the bird started the trip with a full stomach, so
| that it had the fuel not only to power itself but also to
| repair itself in flight.
| rpastuszak wrote:
| > Let's give the technology 60 million years to be perfected
| and then compare.
|
| Your point being?
| rpastuszak wrote:
| I really don't get the point of that comment, that was a
| genuine question.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| I mean, it's pretty clear what the point is. That we are
| comparing a few decades of work with what is essentially
| millenias worth of evolutions.
|
| Of course our technology is going to lose, it's nowhere
| near as mature as nature's.
| foxhop wrote:
| Technology will never replace nature, only augment. People who
| think wrongly will be the destroyers of nature.
| vimacs2 wrote:
| I'd go a step further and say that technology is nature.
| Humans just represent another way for nature to enhance the
| permutation of new possibilities. For thousands of years, we
| acted like the animal analogue to the fungal mattes that had
| terraformed the continental landmasses to become livable by
| plants hundreds of millions of years ago.
|
| Everywhere we went, we planted intricately organised forests
| of different plant species that then aided an enhanced
| biodiversity of the fauna too. It's only recently in our
| history that humans have turned from a proliferator of
| biodiversity to a poison for it.
| ninkendo wrote:
| Humans have always been a disaster for the environment they
| move into. We drove mammoths to extinction over 10,000
| years ago. Australia used to have large numbers of
| megafauna species which the aborigines killed off tens of
| thousands of years ago. Humans would use fire to burn their
| prey out of hiding (and destroying their habitat in the
| process), then just move off to the next habitat once
| everything was burned up.
|
| Humans being a destructive force to the ecosystems we
| depend on is definitely not a new thing.
| dtech wrote:
| Where are all the horses augmented by technology doing the
| plowing?
| dataflow wrote:
| Well we _are_ destroying nature. And don 't forget the
| whole "sustainable agriculture" movement, and recent
| attentions brought to how plowing degrades soil, etc.
|
| (Just responding to your point; not claiming the parent is
| right or wrong.)
| nawgz wrote:
| Is this a trick question? The horse does not naturally have
| a plough attached, as far as I am aware.
| robotastronaut wrote:
| I think in your scenario we're augmenting humans, not
| horses.
| obiwan14 wrote:
| The horse or cow was not put there to plow our fields. We
| just figured out a way to get them to do that, until we
| developed enough to figure out ways to build more efficient
| methods.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| The plough was meant to augment the nature of the soil, not
| the horse.
|
| The plough turns out to mine the soil, not augment it.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2021/02/24/967376880/new-evidence-
| shows-...
| basilgohar wrote:
| I am so glad to hear this statement from someone else. You
| put into words a feeling that I have have struggled to
| express properly.
|
| A lot of folks look at the narrow window of time of their
| life as evidence for very broad-sweeping claims and frankly,
| I find that to be very arrogant, short-sighted, and
| frightening. A lot of people with this kind of mindset are
| now in high-power positions and making decisions that we have
| yet to see the repercussions for, with the short-term results
| they can show as evidence of their success and no concern for
| the long-terms effects.
| foreigner wrote:
| My favourite is when they suggest replacing bees with
| miniature quadcopters for pollenation.
| obiwan14 wrote:
| Everything we build is an attempt to replicate what already
| exist in nature. How close we come is a function of our
| expertise and understanding of the laws of life. As we
| understand these things better, we'll be able to build objects
| that closely match what's in nature.
| ricksunny wrote:
| Daily Mail seems to have covered a similar journey by this
| species last year, albeit slightly slower:
| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8835459/Jet-fighter...
|
| Still I wouldn't have known about either without the HN-posted
| article.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Is a Scolopacidae. This means that can't feed in the air and
| makes the voyage even more impressive. We have two similar
| species in Europe.
| 1-more wrote:
| Pretty rad that the bird flies so far that it has names in
| languages as far apart (geographically) as Russian, Yupiq, Inuit,
| and te reo Maori.
| 867-5309 wrote:
| from Alaska to New Zealand, as the crow flies, how does one
| "stopover" in Australia?
| jhugo wrote:
| By making a detour from the most direct route. Is this a trick
| question?
| [deleted]
| tudorconstantin wrote:
| At an avg speed of 34.9 mph, or 54.2 km/h. Impressive!
| Y_Y wrote:
| Laden or unladen?
| danw1979 wrote:
| I don't see how this is relevant considering the bird is
| neither European or African and didn't stop in either
| continent during its migration.
| rudian wrote:
| Sorry this isn't the argument department.
| danw1979 wrote:
| Yes it is.
| OneTimePetes wrote:
| This is not a argument, this is just contradiction.
| [deleted]
| werdnapk wrote:
| Gonna have to lean towards laden as the bird was carrying a
| tracker.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| Weighing 5 grams.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| That beats a coconut by a factor of 200.
| smirutrandola wrote:
| Well, that was faster than my last shipment.
|
| Next time I'll send through a pigeon.
| mirekrusin wrote:
| Wait a second, how sure are we that the bird was not chillin
| on cargo ship?
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Unless it was an aircraft carrier, unlikely.
|
| The bird's average speed is 33 mph (29 knots). Cargo
| vessels tend to cruise at about 18-25 knots, and many move
| more slowly.
|
| There's little direct traffic between Alaska and Australia.
| Shipping lines are visible through their emissions trails,
| as in this Nullschool link showing NO2 concentrations, from
| May of this year. The long lines are shipping lanes. You'll
| note these from Panama to New Zealand, tracking along the
| Western US coast and Alaska along the Great Circle route to
| Japan and China, and past Papua New Guinea, among other
| notable routes:
|
| https://earth.nullschool.net/#2021/05/01/1300Z/chem/surface
| /...
|
| The data recorders would also likely note any marked
| variations in travel speed or direction. Again, ships tend
| not to cover the routes flown by Godwits.
| nimajneb wrote:
| This is fascinating. Thanks for the link to read.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| As a human being, I find these feats of navigation and stamina
| astounding.
|
| Human beings cannot do anything like this.
|
| These birds are awesome.
|
| Still, I find it peculiar and somehow off the mark to
| contextualise one bird's flight as a "world record".
|
| In the bird's world, these are ordinary events. The only standout
| feature of that flight is that no human had witnessed and
| recorded anything more superlative.
|
| It's OK that humans enjoy measuring things and celebrating the
| longest X or the biggest Y or the fastest Z. As I human, I get
| that.
|
| What's less OK, and somewhat diminishing of the bird's natural
| majesty, is that if another bird were to fly 2% slower or less
| far, humans might shrug their shoulders and ask, so what?
| lm28469 wrote:
| > Human beings cannot do anything like this
|
| We're quite good when trained, but the average diet/lifestyle
| doesn't allow us to come anywhere close to our potential
| e-clinton wrote:
| > Human beings cannot do anything like this.
|
| Yes, and birds are lousy coders. We all have our strengths.
| kijin wrote:
| They may be lousy coders, but they're quite good at carrying
| data as per RFC 1149.
| PostOnce wrote:
| > Human beings cannot do anything like this.
|
| Well, I've flown that far in a day, carrying a couple of
| suitcases, but it took that bird a week and a half with no
| luggage.
| eCa wrote:
| > Well, I've flown that far in a day
|
| To be the nitpick: You have _been_ flown that far in a day.
| On a species-level perhaps an equally impressive feat, but on
| an individual level I'm more impressed by the birdie..
| jjoonathan wrote:
| If we're going to do accounting on an individual level then
| a tiny fraction of individuals are responsible for flying
| everyone else (and their luggage and their mail and...)
| which is super impressive again.
| zaarn wrote:
| A human can fly on their own lift provided you accelerate
| the human fast enough (bricks fly too after all). Not very
| comfortable though.
| pantulis wrote:
| Also it was not carrying any liquids.
| pc86 wrote:
| So we're not so different after all.
| mp3k wrote:
| the breatharian bird
| wefarrell wrote:
| _Human beings cannot do anything like this._
|
| The most comparable feat of navigation and stamina that humans
| can do is sailing around the world alone. Some sailors will
| sleep for no more than 20 minutes at a time scattered
| throughout the day.
| Karsteski wrote:
| Human beings the best long distance runners on the planet. I
| think that's awesome as well ;)
| demosito666 wrote:
| They aren't though, unless you start adding specifically
| tailored constraints like the run should happen in a very hot
| place.
|
| A trained horse can cover 100+ miles per day with a rider, a
| husky can run 100+ miles in a sledge, and they will probably
| outpace humans. Not to mention that only a tiny fraction of
| humans can even finish a marathon, which is no big deal for
| most wolves or horses.
|
| And camels and maybe ostriches will probably outrun us in hot
| climate as well (but that I didn't check).
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > Not to mention that only a tiny fraction of humans can
| even finish a marathon
|
| Depends on the time constraints - I think a large
| percentage people can finish a marathon within 12 hours,
| even more if you allow up to 16 hours.
| phonypc wrote:
| That's walking pace though. Humans probably compare even
| less favourably to other animals if you open it up to the
| ability to walk marathon distance.
| Sharlin wrote:
| However, horses are uniquely good at endurance because they
| have sweat glands all over their body, just like primates
| do. (And that's of course one of the reasons we
| domesticated them.) Almost all other mammals fare much
| worse.
| ejolto wrote:
| A trained human can also run 100+ miles per day. The world
| record is 309.399 km (191.879 miles) for men [1].
|
| [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/24-hour_run
| [deleted]
| coldcode wrote:
| Unless you let the human have a bicycle.
| Karsteski wrote:
| Hmmm that's fair. Well none of these animals have internet
| and until they do, I'll continue to find humans just as
| impressive
| dghughes wrote:
| Our ancestors would jog for hours to chase down prey. The prey
| had to stop to pant to cool down which it couldn't do while
| running. I don't know how long it would have taken but at least
| a few hours seems like a reasonable assumption to wear down the
| animal prey. Although I don't think even our ancestors could
| jog for 239 hours straight.
| [deleted]
| iamben wrote:
| Reminds me of the man vs horse races
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_versus_Horse_Marathon).
| Man rarely wins unless the weather is hot.
| Sharlin wrote:
| To be fair, though, horses are uniquely good at endurance
| compared to almost all other non-primate mammals. They have
| sweat glands all over their body just like humans do.
| j9461701 wrote:
| what about dogs? They can cover nearly 1,000 miles of
| rough winter terrain in under 2 weeks, as seen in the
| iditarod. Or if we're looking at long distance travel in
| hot environments what about camels? I think this "humans
| can run down any animal with our endurance" stuff is
| vastly overblown. We're above average, but hardly the
| best on earth.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| A human can run down any animal on earth because we're
| smart, not just because we have amazing endurance.
|
| Animals don't realize that if they just ran 10 miles away
| they would escape easily. They'll just run far enough
| away that they can't really see us anymore. Then we find
| them and chase them again. Eventually they get tired
| because they sprint away and we conserve our energy.
|
| A horse may be physically capable of running farther than
| a human, but actually getting them to do that is another
| thing.
| echelon wrote:
| Dogs can't do endurance running in the heat like we can.
| Cooling is a limitation for most mammals.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance_running_hypothesi
| s
|
| Humans vs horses: https://slate.com/culture/2012/06/long-
| distance-running-and-...
|
| Cheetahs, wolves : https://www.businessinsider.com/how-
| humans-evolved-to-be-bes...
|
| We're really good at running.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| Pretty interesting that all the counter-examples named so
| far are those that have been domesticated by humans
| lobocinza wrote:
| Also the times are relatively close.
| [deleted]
| 10x-dev wrote:
| I don't recall the title, but I remember a documentary where
| an African tribe member would slow jog after an animal for
| about 24 hours before the animal would get exhausted, so a
| few hours seems on the lower end of the jogging requirements
| for our ancestors, but am happy to be proven wrong
| the-dude wrote:
| Maybe they invented relay too.
| pmahoney wrote:
| There's Cliff Young's win in the 875km Westfield Sydney to
| Melbourne Ultramarathon.
|
| > While the other competitors stopped to sleep for six
| hours, Young kept running. He ran continuously for five
| days, taking the lead during the first night and eventually
| winning by 10 hours
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_Young_(athlete)
| soedirgo wrote:
| This is the one that I remember watching
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=826HMLoiE_o. Not exactly 24
| hours though.
| Lhiw wrote:
| Humans can effectively run forever if it weren't for
| needing sleep, or eventually, needing to replace fat
| stores.
|
| > Previous estimates, when accounting for glycogen
| depletion, suggest that a human could run at about a 10
| minute per mile pace, which allows existing fat stores to
| be converted to glycogen, forever. The only limit to our
| eventual mileage, therefore, is our need for sleep.
| https://nikomccarty.medium.com/how-far-can-humans-
| run-d5c97f...
| js2 wrote:
| There are regularly 24 hour races and I've done a few
| myself. 100 miles in 24 hours isn't that hard. The record
| was just recently set at 192.25 miles (309.4 km):
|
| https://www.runnersworld.com/news/a37465691/sania-
| sorokin-24...
|
| There are also 48 hr and 7 day races. Sleep is necessary
| somewhere between those two points, though two guys just
| went 85 hours with basically no sleep:
|
| https://www.bigsbackyardultra.com/
|
| That's a race where every hour on the hour you have to
| complete 4.166 miles. You get as much rest as the balance
| of your time after you complete a lap till the next hour
| begins. Most competitors complete a lap in around 48-52
| minutes. The race continues until there is only one
| runner left to complete a lap.
| pkphilip wrote:
| Then we have Cliff Young who ran 875 km in 5 days - at
| the age of 61.
|
| https://www.farmprogress.com/blog/cliff-young-farmer-who-
| out...
| jacoblb64 wrote:
| You might be thinking of this documentary:
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0262452/
| elb2020 wrote:
| The book Born to Run by Christopher McDougall should probably
| also be mentioned here. It has this theory as one of it's
| central premises.
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6289283-born-to-run
| blackoil wrote:
| How would have evolution figured out this path/route? Also any
| reason why this long trip is made instead of flying to say
| California?
| jasonhansel wrote:
| Cost of living is too high there now.
| q1w2 wrote:
| Probably gradual optimizations in flying from Alaska, thru the
| Aleutian islands, to Kamchatka Russia, to Japan, to Korea, to
| China, to Taiwan, to the Philippines, to Indonesia, to
| Australia.
|
| In fact, going directly over the Pacific is only maybe ~30%
| shorter.
| robocat wrote:
| I live in Christchurch, NZ, and so I see a variety of long
| distance travellers in the swamplands and estuaries, including
| bar-tailed godwits at the end of Southshore spit
| https://newsline.ccc.govt.nz/news/story/draft-godwits-arriva...
|
| A huge amount of housing and infrastructure here wouldn't be
| allowed now, because when it was built it would have disrupted
| rare birds (or perhaps that is why the birds are now rare).
|
| It does make one feel more aware of how the world is connected
| when you realise that migratory birds need to survive stopovers
| in other countries like China.
|
| The birds also need to survive in New Zealand, where just a few
| signs and some social convention prevents dogs from attacking
| nesting sites (edit: or people disturbing them), and it would be
| hard to lock down the area since many people would strongly
| assert their rights to go there.
| veb wrote:
| I'm in Dunedin, but I didn't even know these birds came here!
| That's amazing. Do you know if DOC or whoever are planning
| anything to help?
|
| People aren't allowed to go into the breeding areas on the
| Otago Peninsula for Albatrosses, surely something similar could
| be done for these?
|
| I just wish our govt would assert more control in our EEZ from
| illegal fishing. It's very saddening when you read articles
| about how the adult birds get caught in the nests etc.
| Yet the most pernicious threats to albatrosses today are not to
| chicks but to adult birds. Along with other seabirds, they are
| locked in a competitive battle with humankind for the food
| resources of the sea--and the birds are losing. This is not
| just because of the efficiency of modern fishing practices but
| because fishing equipment--hooks, nets and trawl wires--
| inflicts a heavy toll of injury and death.[0]
|
| [0] https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/in-harms-way/
| adam-_- wrote:
| Lovely. My 2yo child really enjoys correctly identifying the Bar-
| tailed godwit (along with all the other birds) in this
| wonderfully illustrated book: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/what-
| its-like-to-be-a-bird-978...
|
| So, this title made me smile and think of him :)
| FemmeAndroid wrote:
| Thanks for the recommendation. I think my little one will love
| this!
| da39a3ee wrote:
| Based on this subthread I was thinking of buying this as a
| Christmas present for a young child. The first Amazon review
| does somewhat call that into question.
|
| > This is nowhere more evident than in the chapter on Touch.
| Somehow without ever sounding vulgar, it concludes with a
| hapless graduate student of the author masturbating an
| African buffalo weaver in the name of science! The use of the
| phrase "vigorous venery" in the description charmed me into
| awarding five stars on the spot.
|
| Not that I'm being closed-minded or prudish here; I'm open to
| the idea that a book could work on multiple levels, appealing
| to small children while also dealing with the difficult
| subject of avian masturbation.
| whatever1 wrote:
| According to Wikipedia a godwit weighs ~0.5kg and it flew 7000
| miles. If my calculations are right we are looking at 1.5kwh of
| energy and 0.2 wh per mile?
|
| Even if we assume that the bird is almost all fat and fat can
| store ~3500kcal per pound, the maximum stored energy is 4kwh.
| That gives us 0.8wh per mile. So we can safely say that the bird
| spent [1.5-4kwh] to do this trip.
|
| Teslas that are very efficient are in the order of 200 wh per
| mile.
|
| What the heck we have a lot of work to do.
| anshumankmr wrote:
| I suppose they could swoop down for a quick bite or two, right?
| Some of these birds have a really good vision and can spot fish
| easily from quite a distance and if they are flying over the
| ocean, there isn't any shortage of fish there.
| a11r wrote:
| Even more incredible since the article points out that "Unlike
| albatross or other long-flying seabirds, godwits are active
| flyers, not gliders--their wings are moving the whole time." I
| wonder if they can use the active-flying equivalent of
| regenerative braking in favorable wind conditions to actually
| generate energy while flapping their wings. Not sure if any
| animals can generate energy while walking downhill.
| arrow7000 wrote:
| The body's only energy store is ATP, which you can't generate
| from nothing
| ajb wrote:
| This isn't quite true. When muscles stretch, they store
| energy like a spring does. But for very long, of course,
| but if the cycle is repeated many times that's still many
| times more efficient than not storing it. Don't know if
| that applies here though.
| queuebert wrote:
| Godwits aren't carrying a bunch of fat mammals around.
|
| Try normalizing by mass.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Mass isn't great either, due to scaling laws. Physics simply
| behaves differently at different scales.
|
| An ant can lift a hundred times its body weight, but if you
| scale it up to human size it collapses under its own weight
| and immediately dies.
|
| You can drop an injection moulded plastic toy car a hundred
| times its height into the ground and it won't even dent. If
| you make a car frame out of the same materials and with the
| same techniques it will likely fall apart before it's off the
| conveyor belt.
|
| If you make a scale model of a planetary, you'll struggle
| getting it to start spinning around its center of mass
| through gravitational forces.
| gmax wrote:
| a good explainer video for scaling of mass:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7KSfjv4Oq0
| whatever1 wrote:
| A kilo of tesla cannnot travel a single mile. Half kilo of
| this bird can travel 7000 miles non stop.
|
| It makes no sense to normalize by weight because it does not
| scale by weight.
| [deleted]
| dr_orpheus wrote:
| Some birds also eat flying insects as a source (if not primary
| source sometimes) of food. I don't know if this is true of the
| godwit or not. For example the swift eats airborne insects and
| has been recorded to stay up in the air for 10 months [0]
|
| [0] https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
| way/2016/10/27/499635084...
| mr_mitm wrote:
| I don't think comparing a car to a bird is a good comparison.
| Compare the bird to a glider. The world record appears to be
| 3000km without a power source (except for the launch,
| obviously). Surely as a bird or a plane you can take advantage
| of lifts, i.e. warmer air rising up, then just glide.
| whatever1 wrote:
| Wow that sounds insane. How much luck do you need to achieve
| that though ? Can I consistently fly from point a to point b
| using air streams?
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| It needs a lot of planning. You can't consistently do these
| trips.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-11-15 23:00 UTC)