
How frigatebirds cross entire oceans without ever needing to rest - dnetesn
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2016/06/30/how-frigate-birds-cross-entire-oceans-without-ever-needing-to-rest/?wpisrc=nl_draw&wpmm=1
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davidw
This kind of article is _exactly_ what I think of when I think of great HN
articles that are not about hacking or startups. It's just plain interesting
for people curious about the world, it doesn't have some kind of political
point or message, and it doesn't generate lame discussion.

~~~
roymurdock
Yeah pretty amazing article that was surprisingly not just clickbait.
Especially this bit:

 _Frigatebirds are the only seabirds that lack waterproof feathers — if they
dive into the ocean or even land on its surface, the water will soak their
plumage and prevent them from taking flight again. This should be a death
knell to a species that dines exclusively on fish, but it 's not. Frigatebirds
can soar high above the ocean, eyes peeled for movement in the water below — a
sign that a large predator, like tuna or dolphin, is scaring fish to the
surface._

And this bit:

 _It 's still not clear how the birds sleep during these epic journeys.
Weimerskirch said there's evidence that they can shut down half their brains
as they ascend on updrafts.

"They are probably getting small bouts of sleep at this time — maybe two to
three minutes," he said._

Just awesome.

~~~
HillaryBriss
(so sorry - cannot resist)

 _It 's not just awesome. It's frigate amazing!_

(please don't hate me. someone had to say it. once again, i apologize.)

~~~
davidw
Sorry about the downvoters - _I_ thought it was funny!

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yardie
We saw many of these birds and tropicbirds during our Atlantic crossing. They
used the trampoline on our catamaran as a rest stop. They also learned that
they can't do a carrier landing on solar panels. It was funny to watch them
come in for a landing and slide right off the back of the boat.

It looks like they feed on flying fish, primarily. These would jump out of the
water and skim across the surface for hundreds of meters, and then BAM!, a
bird would swoop in and end its existence.

~~~
jim-greer
They do feed on flying fish, among others. Here's a good clip from the newest
BBC nature documentary on it:

[https://youtu.be/szuchBiLrEM](https://youtu.be/szuchBiLrEM)

~~~
wnevets
Wow who knew being a flying fish was such a pain.

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peterwwillis
_" Allowing air currents to do the work of lifting them makes frigatebirds'
flight hugely efficient. The heart rate monitors Weimerskirch and his
colleagues attached to the birds showed that they didn't flap their wings at
all while gaining altitude — the energy costs of ascending thousands of feet
in the air were the same as when they were sitting still."_

Aeronautical engineers: what's it take to develop long-range flight vehicles
that are this efficient? Graphite wings/fuselage?

~~~
alphapapa
Gliders have existed for many years, and sometimes skilled pilots can fly for
hundreds of miles riding thermals and updrafts. The problems are payload and
reliability. The aircraft itself may not weigh much, but whatever you want to
carry will likely be. And if you can't find a thermal when or where you need
one, you have to land.

~~~
peterwwillis
If birds can maneuver continuously for over two months without landing, so can
a machine. For me the question is can we both design the vehicle to have the
correct physical properties, and an intelligent-enough automated flight
computer? I think the former will simply require a very very large wingspan
made of the lightest strongest material we have [currently Carbyne, formerly
Graphite, with the metal alternative being "New Magnesium"].

Once this is accomplished, we could potentially make air transportation [in
certain routes] much cheaper. This would have benefits like eliminating the
risk of ocean pollution when a large ship crashes/capsizes, faster
transportation of goods, and at the same time not be limited in transportation
cost by oil market prices. And such designs, if made practical, could possibly
be transferred to new aerospace engineering where weight-to-strength are at a
premium.

Designing an intelligent flight computer that can account for air currents
could also make flight less turbulent, and potentially improve our
understanding and prediction of weather patterns.

~~~
tonyarkles
There's also the pesky "refueling" bit. These birds run on fish; I don't think
we've really designed effective ICE or fuel cells that run on fish yet.

~~~
walrus01
we've developed robots that will 'collect' biological matter (slugs) and
ferment it into gases which can be used for electrical generation, but it's
incredibly inefficient and likely not suited for aviation.

[http://archive.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/news/2001/10/...](http://archive.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/news/2001/10/47156?currentPage=all)

~~~
tonyarkles
> A prototype robot capable of hunting down over 100 slugs an hour and using
> their rotting bodies to generate electricity is being developed by engineers
> at the University of West England's Intelligent Autonomous Systems
> Laboratory.

That's both... disgusting and delightful!

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bahjoite
Fascinating. This bit is troubling though "A follow-up study with miniature
loggers that monitor sleep will test this hypothesis". How would such a logger
unobtrusively monitor sleep?

~~~
DanWaterworth
EEG?

~~~
bahjoite
Surprisingly, yes; there is a device named "Neurologger 2/2A[0]" which has a
mass of just over 2g and a battery life of 33 hours.

From the abstract of "Do birds sleep in flight?", Niels Rattenborg[1]:-

"The recent miniaturization of EEG recording devices now makes it possible to
measure brain activity in flight. Determining if and how birds sleep in flight
will contribute to our understanding of a largely unexplored aspect of avian
behavior and may also provide insight into the function of sleep."

and in the section entitled "Future Directions":-

"Until recently, EEG recording devices were too large for a bird to carry in
flight. However, Vyssotski et al. (2006)[2] recently developed and
successfully deployed an EEG and a global positioning system (GPS) logger on
pigeons during short, daytime homing flights to their loft."

[0]:
[http://www.vyssotski.ch/neurologger2.html](http://www.vyssotski.ch/neurologger2.html)

[1]:
[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/7093774_Do_birds_sl...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/7093774_Do_birds_sleep_in_flight)

[2]:
[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/7529290_Miniature_n...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/7529290_Miniature_neurologgers_for_flying_pigeons_Multichannel_EEG_and_action_and_field_potentials_in_combination_with_GPS_recording)

~~~
DanWaterworth
That's brilliant. I love that there are people in the world working on "EEG
for birds". It might even be my favourite "X for Y" startup idea.

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lordnacho
I thought they were mainly thieves. When I was in Galapagos, I was actually
taking pics of a booby feeding its kid when a frigate flew right through both
of them, grabbing the fish as it flew through. All three of us were surprised.

They also bother the other birds in mid flight, causing them to drop their
food.

