So here’s a question: how high can a bird fly? Well, there is an exclusive club of birds that can get over 8Km up. They include a Crow, a Goose, and a Crane. But the bird that beats them all has a record confirmed height of 11.3Km, and that bird is Ruppell’s Vulture.
We know for a fact this Vulture can get that high because in 1973 a commercial airliner sucked one into its jets while cruising at that altitude. The plane managed an emergency landing without loss of life. Well … except the bird. It got eviscerated.
But that’s pretty amazing. People can’t even get to the top of Mt Everest, a pitiful 8Km into the sky without needing oxygen. These birds go another three like it ain’t no thing. So what’s going on?
The trick lies in their haemoglobin. They have a special kind of protein in their blood that is basically a magnet for oxygen. So much so, that even under low pressure they have no trouble drawing what they need from the thin air.
Now, you may know that like most eagles and vultures, they’re able to get so high because they ride thermal currents: huge columns of hot air that rise off the warmed earth into the upper atmosphere. But the better question, is why do they go so high? They’ve got great eyesight and all, but let’s be honest, they ain’t seeing anything on the ground from up there.
Well, as you may also know, vultures are scavengers, they feed on the flesh of the dead. So, they tend to ominously follow herds of animals. That means, wherever the herd goes, they go. So sometimes they need to migrate long distances. But all that flapping can be a real hassle. You know what’s better? Getting swept up in a thermal current as high as it will go and then just gliding back to earth. Using this tactic Ruppell’s Vulture can travel miles without so much as a flap of a wing. If they time it right, they can even glide from one thermal to the next and ride them like a rollercoaster, up and down the whole way to where they need to go.
29/05/2022
Bird of the Week 