Saturday, November 12, 2016

Things About Birds

By Brian Stansberry (Own work) [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
1) Canadian geese generally fly at about 3,000 feet for migration, but have been seen at heights up to 29,000 feet.  I want to be a Canadian goose.

Actually, I kind of don't because I always think about how horrible the time seemed to be when the characters from The Magicians were flying to Brakebills as geese. Also, I really don't do well with heights, so disregard that sentence.
By Rudraksha Chodankar (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
2) The Alpine swift can fly for SIX MONTHS straight without touching land. That's incredible. Scientists have known for some time that swifts spend most of their time in the air, but these tiny birds were hard to study until they developed these lightweight sensors that didn't weigh the swifts down.  And now we learned that they basically only land to nest and they sleep awing.  Crazy swifts.
Think you can tell them apart? Try it yourself.
3. Crows can tell people apart, but people can't tell crows apart. Scientists did this fun sounding study in which they put on masks and had the people in masks do mean things to the birds. The birds remembered those masks for years and even somehow taught successive generations about the bad masks, so more crows than just those who originally saw the mask knew to be wary. But humans can't tell crows apart.  Because we are inferior species.

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