
Why Birds Can Fly over Mount Everest - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/86/energy/why-birds-can-fly-over-mount-everest
======
mncharity
Science and engineering, history and everyday life, are a densely interwoven
tapestry of stories. Imagine teaching them like that!

But... viably teaching the tapestry, may require a much lower prevalence of
misconception, and lack of insight, among teachers and texts. And creating
such content, insightful and correct, is _hard_. Really _really_ hard. As
illustrated by the many newspaper-like "err, no, that's not quite right"
errata of the OP story.

Which is one reason why sci-hub seems to me so very important (apropos a
recent HN discussion). My experience is it's not even close to possible, to
write such correct and insightful stories, without extensive use of the
primary research literature across multiple fields. Creating such stories is
already very poorly incentivized. And an awesome timesink, even by the already
daunting standards of writing a book. Open access is increasingly wonderful,
but only sci-hub holds at bay, for now, the additional filter of potential
authors having to be simultaneously actively affiliated with a research
university, and having copious free time. Without sci-hub, we're back to
professors emeriti being the primary pool of potential authors.

VR/AR is a wonderful medium for storytelling. Perhaps we can use it as an
excuse to begin creating wonderful stories. But it seems a nontrivial societal
challenge.

~~~
bsder
> But... viably teaching the tapestry, may require a much lower prevalence of
> misconception, and lack of insight, among teachers and texts. And creating
> such content, insightful and correct, is hard. Really really hard.

This is why people like James Burke ("Connections" and other documentaries)
are so important.

They can _do_ this. But this takes _funding_ from somewhere. And it's not
going to make a profit.

But it will make for a better society.

~~~
mncharity
Some years back, I talked with someone from PBS education video, about doing
interative development and user testing, as with software. Rather creating the
finished video and tossing it over the wall to be seen, and even then only
rarely tested.

Their comment was they'd love to do that, and would... just as soon as someone
was willing to pay for it.

------
projektfu
He’s leaving out the bit about the low oxygen tension and what adaptations
allow birds to effectively deliver oxygen at altitude. The air sac system is
good for high-demand situations, where increased ventilation is needed. But if
the blood is simply not able to pick up enough oxygen, the ventilation rate
doesn’t matter much. This is why we need pressure suits at high altitude.

I’m sure when dinosaurs were dealing with 12% oxygen they had developed
adaptations to handle it. Special hemoglobins, etc. Whatever that is, is the
real reason. The efficient air sac-lung system is better at explaining how
they ventilate well and deal with high winds.

~~~
samstave
This is the reason why hummingbirds are the most amazing creatures and their
blood should be studied, more deeply.

They basically have the ability to pull in oxygen at an order of magnitude
greater ppm than hemoglobin based mammals...

But their metabolism requires a really high sugar intake constantly.

But their speed and endurance is stunning, some humming birds migrate btwn
north and south america....

They are also fiercely territorial - ive witnessed two fight literally two
feet from me - attacking and pecking at eachother, with the loser of the
battle falling on the ground... (whom i picked up and brought him to bart in
an uber i was catching - he woke up and escaped my grip and i was in an uber
with a hummingbird flying around... ill never forget that experience, the
driver loved it)

~~~
js2
We have a hummingbird feeder outside our kitchen window. Watching their antics
all summer long is a great source of entertainment. The feeder has six feeding
spots, but of course they chase each other off so that only one can feed at a
time. Sometimes a wasp is at the feeder and the wasp and hummingbird tolerate
each other.

~~~
samstave
Watch this

[https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/super-hummingbirds-full-
epis...](https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/super-hummingbirds-full-
episode/14586/)

 __ _“Humming birds have the highest metabolic rates of any invertebrates”_ __

~~~
Someone
_“We 're sorry, but this video is not available”_

Checked the transcript. Luckily, it says vertebrates :-)

~~~
js2
Probably only available in the U.S. and maybe only if you support your local
PBS station. It’s also available for purchase on DVD or iTunes.

[https://shop.pbs.org/nature-super-hummingbirds-
dvd/product/N...](https://shop.pbs.org/nature-super-hummingbirds-
dvd/product/NAT63401)

------
BorisTheBrave
> Mr. R&D: Hello, what I can do for you?

> MC: We think there is a dangerous situation developing, because oxygen
> levels have gotten higher every year and they might now be at 35 percent.

> Mr. R&D: So?

> MC: With indigestible lignin, there is nothing to keep it from continuing to
> go up.

This part is misleading. Evolution has no capacity to look ahead to future
disasters (as the mass extinction later demonstrates). I understand that
lignin digestion was evolved for the same reason we burn coal - a hitherto
untapped source of engergy.

~~~
emiliobumachar
+1. Besides being a good story, the piece is also informative, and that part,
unfortunately, is misinformation.

On the other hand, let me introduce a wild hypothesis: There are millions of
planets out there just like Earth, except that microorganisms there never got
around to digesting lignin. Deadwood and oxygen piled up on the ground and in
the atmosphere respectively, until an epic fire decimated the biosphere, and
only microscopic ocean life remained, if as much. The oldest such planets
light up every billion years or so. The cycle is too short for complex life to
get intelligent. This process is The Great Filter [1]. Earth is the only
exception.

If that's true, than Mr. R&D _did_ care a lot about future disasters.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter)

~~~
kremlin
I had this thought while I was reading this. when he said the bit about there
being so much oxygen in the atmosphere that the whole thing could light on
fire, I thought, "maybe there's some planet that that happened on. maybe most
planets with live have that happen eventually".

------
wcoenen
It also helps that the Himalayas have slowly grown from nothing over the past
50 million years. The ancestors of the bar-headed goose had the opportunity to
gradually adapt as the mountains rose. (Not all birds can do this, even with
their superior lungs.)

edit: I had assumed that the Himalayas grew gradually over 50 million years,
but it turns out that the current growth rate is way too fast for that. It
would take less than a million years to reach the current height. There must
have been regular apocalyptic landslides in the geological history of the
Himalayas to limit the height of the mountains?

~~~
mncharity
> limit the height of the mountains

Gravitational potential energy becomes sufficient to pay for rock deformation.
As with toothpaste, when a pile gets sufficiently high, the bottom plastically
deforms until it isn't. For a higher mountain range, you need a lower-G
planet, like Mars.

~~~
wcoenen
This makes it sound like the elastic deformation at the bottom balances out
the forces that are pushing the mountain up. But we know that this is
currently not the case, because we observe the Himalayas getting several
centimeters taller each year. (For the same reason, we know that gradual
erosion can't be enough to counteract the growth.)

Hence my assumption that the process of the mountains growing must be reset in
a catastrophic manner from time to time. I guess the stresses build up
somewhere until an apocalyptic earthquake happens that takes down entire
mountains, rather than a gradual toothpaste-like deformation.

~~~
mncharity
> The Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau to the north have risen very rapidly.
> In just 50 million years, peaks such as Mt. Everest have risen to heights of
> more than 9 km. The impinging of the two landmasses has yet to end. The
> Himalayas continue to rise more than 1 cm a year -- a growth rate of 10 km
> in a million years! If that is so, why aren't the Himalayas even higher?
> Scientists believe that the Eurasian Plate may now be stretching out rather
> than thrusting up, and such stretching would result in some subsidence due
> to gravity.[1]

EDIT: Gravitational deformation creates a maximum bound near Himalayan height.
But actual height below that is apparently a mix of tectonic support from the
sides, above-snowline erosion, and boat floating on mantle.[2]

[1]
[https://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/dynamic/himalaya.html](https://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/dynamic/himalaya.html)
[2]
[https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01601-4](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01601-4)
Sci-hub doesn't have the underlying paper yet.

------
GuiA
_I’m going to call evolution “Mr. R &D.” When he finds a problem, Mr. R&D
tests things out in different ways to come up with a solution. But sometimes
those solutions have unforeseen consequences. So here we go!_

(not quoting every other part of the article where plants form committees to
decide what to do next and receive "lignin" as a ready made thing, not as an
emergent result of its own evolutionary process)

Oh, no. These kind of weird anthropomorphic ideas - that evolution is actively
"finding problems" and "testing solutions" \- take years to remove from
students' minds. And make it very unclear whether the author themselves
actually do understand what they're talking about or just parroting the same
story they heard.

Cue the "but it's for kids!" arguments. Kids aren't dumb, and perfectly
capable of understanding selective pressure - but you are doing them a huge
disservice by making them feel like they understand something when really they
understand your inaccurate (yet entertaining!) story.

~~~
acqq
Yes. And I believe it's not an accident, whenever I see an article posted on
HN from nautil.us I expect that the science will be twisted to the point of
inducing confusion, and I believe it's an "editorial policy" which stems from
the fact that they are financed by John_Templeton_Foundation (1) "a
philanthropic organization that reflects the ideas of its founder, John
Templeton, who became wealthy after a career as a contrarian investor and
wanted to support progress in religious and spiritual knowledge, especially at
the intersection of religion and science." (2)

Of course, I don't believe that every article has the same bias, but I saw it
appearing with certain regularity.

1) [http://nautil.us/about](http://nautil.us/about)

2)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Templeton_Foundation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Templeton_Foundation)

------
stuff4ben
This is a great way to tell the story of climate change and what led up to it.
I loved the narration style, you could probably create a childrens book from
it.

~~~
leokennis
Was about to say the same. When I started reading I was scared of
oversimplification but this piece perfectly rode the line between a whimsical
read and providing scientific knowledge!

~~~
ElFitz
I've found Nautilus to (generally) be really great for that exact reason

~~~
selectodude
[https://www.cjr.org/cjr_outbox/nautilus-under-new-
ownership-...](https://www.cjr.org/cjr_outbox/nautilus-under-new-ownership-
commits-to-paying-back-writers.php)

I just hope they end up actually paying all these excellent writers.

------
mncharity
> Maybe if we never started burning fossil fuel, civilization would have
> continued along the path it was traveling in Shakespeare’s time

The path of deforesting Europe? Ok, but even without an industrial revolution,
that path only runs another century or two.

Maybe with an earlier medieval civilization, and sufficient plagues and
famines?

------
unchocked
Incredible storytelling, well worth the full read. Reminds me of David Burke's
Connections, where a complex history is distilled down to a gripping human-
relatable narrative.

... which matters, because while the objective world is made of complex
systems our subjective lives are based on narrative. We are evolved to be a
storytelling species, and to have any grip on reality we need to tell the
right stories well.

~~~
dreamcompiler
James Burke.

~~~
Balgair
Available for free here: [https://archive.org/details/james-burke-
connections_s01e01](https://archive.org/details/james-burke-
connections_s01e01)

------
hn_throwaway_99
There was this line from the article:

> I see your point, because at 43 percent a lightning strike will cause the
> entire atmosphere to ignite since it is so high in flammable oxygen.

Is that accurate, and if so where did the 43% number come from?

~~~
emiliobumachar
I'm no chemist, but that does not seem plausible. Fire needs three things:
fuel, oxidizer (e.g. oxygen), and heat. [1]

No matter how much oxygen, the atmosphere would not ignite without fuel.

Forest fires would get epic though.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_triangle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_triangle)

~~~
FlyingAvatar
If you get it hot enough, nitrogen can be oxidized. There is plenty of fuel in
that sense.

~~~
wcoenen
The oxidation of nitrogen gas is endothermic though. It can't produce heat to
sustain a runaway reaction.

~~~
wadkar
Bingo! You beat me to it.

This trivia about Nitrogen used to be my favorite when I was studying
chemistry in the school. Like there’s lot of nitrogen in the atmosphere and
oxygen but they don’t “burn” because (almost all?) nitrogen oxidation is
endothermic!

------
CamperBob2
_The Earth was scheduled to return to another ice age in about 500 years— with
ice two miles thick over Boston, Chicago, Paris, and many other places. But
that won’t happen now. There is already too thick of an atmospheric carbon
dioxide blanket._

Um, I'm not seeing the problem here. Who wants an Ice Age?!

~~~
yellowapple
I mean, it'd be kinda cool if sea levels would drop and make Ice Age coast
lines more accessible; I suspect the new coasts would be an archaeological
treasure trove given the likelihood of our ancient ancestors having traveled
and lived along the coasts of their time, most of which are now underwater.

Also, I really really hate hot weather, and wouldn't mind it being a fair bit
chillier.

------
hinkley
I’ve heard that one of the biggest shocks for new owl handlers is seeing a wet
owl. Owls compact to a stick when wet. All of that bulk is just feathers.

In the case of the owl it’s acoustic insulation (deadly quiet) but there’s a
reason we make feather down coats. That stuff works very well.

------
neallindsay
This does a great job of putting evolution and geological time scales in
perspective.

~~~
jrd259
Then you might like Andrew H. Knoll's book Life On A Young Planet. Knoll is at
Harvard. His book has a long treatment of the global change in oxygen level
(which by the way makes no mention of the theory here, that woody plants did
it.)

~~~
jessaustin
_...which by the way makes no mention of the theory here, that woody plants
did it._

The oxygen "event" discussed in TFA did not fall within the period covered by
Knoll's book: the first 3B years of life on earth. Lignin started to pile up
only after plants came along. I haven't read the book, but you're probably
thinking of "The Oxygen Catastrophe", which was caused by cyanobacteria.

------
nagnostic
Then one day, Ms. VCP approached Mr. R&D and announced, "My sisters and I have
had enough of your toxic masculinity. We demand that your sexist monopoly on
research and development cease!" Mr. R&D pondered Ms. VCP's demand for a
decade or two, then declared, "By George Eliot, I've got it! I'll simply
undergo gender-reassignment surgery and adopt stereotypically feminine habits
of body language and dress!" An overjoyed Ms. VCP applauded Mr. R&D's sudden
embrace of his femininity, and left with a hopeful expectancy of more feminine
things to come.

Mr. R&D changed his, ahem, HER name to Miss Renée Diana, then began adjusting
the sexual hormone levels of every primate fetus until 100,000 years later,
there were but 3 sterile but very not-so-clever and starving primates left
shivering in an Iberian cave. The VNCPs formed a committee, and after 6 months
of heated intersectional discussion, voted on a representative to approach
Miss Renée Diana with their desperate plea.

"You rang?", replied Miss Renée Diana. "Um, no, I haven't a bell but have been
screaming at the top of my lungs for a week, Miss RD. We three VNCPs, we're
starving and cannot increase our population, nor compete against these damned
hyper-evolved sea otters for food!" "How may I help you?", inquired Miss RD.
"Well, I used to have a working set of ovaries and lactating breasts until the
starvation kicked in. We had to eat the baby. My two pals, one of them we
can't tell what sex they are because they refuse to disclose. The other one
has situational erectile dysfunction because, well, we can't stand his, um, I
mean their, toxic display of potential male hegemony. Please, Miss Renée
Diana, we implore of you, help us increase our food supply and population!"

With that, the not-so-very clever primate sat and waited for Miss RD's reply.
It came 48 hours later -- astonishingly quick in historical terms, yet none
too soon for the hunger-weakened VNCP. "Oh, toot-a-loo!", sang Miss Renée
Diana. "Uh?", the VNCP faintly responded. "My, you look famished, poor dear.
No matter. I've looked into your case and have decided that sea otters,
however bipedal and adapted to your former haunts, are MUCH too adorable to
allow you VNCPs to re-infest the place. Toot-a-loo!" And with that, Miss RD
sashayed away with gay abandon, leaving the miserable but ideologically pure
VNCPs to their fate.

------
im3w1l
So this made me curious about when the first life managed to live on land.
This article claims it may have been 3.2 bn years ago.
[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-018-0190-9](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-018-0190-9)

------
zulfazli
Interesting that it mentioned a 3-feet wingspan dragonfly. I would have
thought they were limited at their current size because of the law of
aerodynamics...Now I wonder why we don't see any dragonfly based aircraft
around...Fast speed plus incredible manouvering capabilities...

~~~
murkle
One theory is that it was possible due to more Oxygen see eg
[https://www.wired.com/2010/11/huge-dragonflies-
oxygen](https://www.wired.com/2010/11/huge-dragonflies-oxygen)

------
shklnrj
Reading this was better than reading a book. Incredible style. Gripping
narration.

------
mac01021
> The Earth was scheduled to return to another ice age in about 500 years—
> with ice two miles thick over Boston, Chicago, Paris, and many other places.

Can that really be true? 500 years seems awfully short for such a change.

------
quantified
This is HN, yet no one has raised the topic of European vs African swallows.

------
mmmBacon
It's awfully cold at 30,000'. I wonder is how birds are able to keep
themselves warm at those altitudes.

------
lordnacho
How does the air get into the hollow spaces in bird bones? I've never noticed
it when eating chicken.

------
mrlonglong
Why did the bird cross the mountain? To get to the other side!

I'll get my coat.

------
snambi
The fact about lings is correct. Rest is fiction.

------
ChrisMarshallNY
I love this story!

Thanks so much for sharing it!

------
burnte
What a terrible article.

------
sushshshsh
"I'm sure when birds get together, they gossip abou how pathetic our lungs
are"

How is this a book for young children?

~~~
082349872349872
Young children like stories about elephants, which are larger than most
mammals, and horses, which outsprint people. Why should they not appreciate
that birds are better ventilated than mammals? (after all, it's clear to
anyone that the birds of the air are less vertically challenged than the
beasts of the earth)

~~~
sushshshsh
I don't expect someone under the age of 9 to understand what the word pathetic
means.

~~~
jyounker
You don't have kids, do you?

~~~
sushshshsh
The question you are asking is not meaningful because it is possible for a
childless person to know a lot about child behavior, and likewise a parent to
know absolutely nothing about child behavior if they basically are letting
someone else raise their kids while they go to work.

------
cell9840179419
Back in the day, once upon a time bunch of toads valued their happy lovely
pond of fish and stayed put. They turned out humans.

Some, valued freedom. They wanted to see what's beyond that blue yonder and
where those white clouds came from. They became birds.

I regard birds to be vastly superior to humans in spirit and function. Say,
what is our most proudest achievement, flying in a rocket? Yeah. They did that
a million years ago.

Everything we do becomes completely irrelevant if we can become birds. Every
thing. Just every thing. Completely irrelevant.

