![]() “Somehow they can sense things that we can’t,” says Portugal. For various reasons, birds shuffle their positions in flight, changing their flapping rhythm in the process. But, when directly behind another bird, they do the opposite and flap off beat, avoiding downwash. Trailing birds in the V follow the exact wingtip path of the bird ahead to catch their upwash. What comes naturally to birds actually requires great skill and precision. “We just deployed our technology and let them do whatever comes naturally,” says Portugal. The northern bald ibis flock surround their human foster parents Stefanie Heese (left) and Daniela Trobe (right) and the microlight airplane used in the experiment.įor two hours a day, the loggers collected GPS and acceleration data, telling the scientists where the birds were in formation and what they were doing. Then, over several weeks, the birds followed their human “parents” in a microlight parachute aircraft to spend their winter in Italy. First, the scientists developed data loggers, slightly smaller and lighter than an iPod, and strapped one to each bird. Portugal and colleagues remotely observed birds that were born in a zoo in Vienna, Austria, on one such navigation lesson. Reintroducing them to the wild is tricky-to survive, they needed to learn their natural migration route. If northern bald ibis hatchlings are born in captivity, they think of humans as their parents and grow to rely on humans for everything. So, Portugal and his colleagues teamed up with Waldrappteam, a conservation group that is reintroducing the critically endangered northern bald ibis ( Geronticus eremita) to southern Europe. A 2001 study found that pelicans at the front of the V had faster heart rates-and probably used more energy-than those further back. For more this on other potential benefits of flying in a V, here’s a short video:īut how do birds behave within that configuration? Studies of flying birds in the wild are few and far between, and theoretical models of birds in flight only get you so far. Previously, scientists suspected that birds formed a V in flight because the shape allowed some of them to burn less energy. And the flying V configuration, the authors find, helps birds to do that. Whether you’re a bird or a plane, you theoretically want to ride the small upwash part of the vortex. ![]() “The simple rule is upwash is good air, and downwash is bad air,” says Steve Portugal, a comparative ecophysiologist at the Royal Veterinary College in Hatfield, UK, and a co-author of the new study. ![]() ![]() Wings also leave a vortex of air in their wake: air flowing off the top of the wingtips (upwash) creates lift, and air coming off the bottom (downwash) pushes down. Most of what we know about the physics of flying comes from studying airplanes-birds push air down to stay aloft and glide through the air similarly. A study published today in Nature not only confirms this idea, but it also fills in the blanks of how and why birds use it. Secret weapon of birds and underdog hockey players alike, the flying V formation is believed to be ideal for energy and aerodynamics.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |