Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren bogel Bomb Here. Imagine your average three year old
Speaker 1: human child, something around three ft or a meter tall,
Speaker 1: probably covered in jam. Now imagine that child trying to
Speaker 1: get off the ground with a pair of wings. They
Speaker 1: have to be pretty big wings. Welcome to the plight
Speaker 1: of the Andean condor, species name Voltore griffiths, the heaviest
Speaker 1: flying bird in the world, weighing in it up to
Speaker 1: thirty three pounds or fifteen kilos. They keep their heavy
Speaker 1: bodies in the air with some of the longest wings
Speaker 1: in the world. Their wingspan can range over ten ft long,
Speaker 1: that's over three meters. There are only a handful of
Speaker 1: birds currently living on our planet that have larger wingspans,
Speaker 1: and they're all pelagic birds. Polagic birds being seabirds that
Speaker 1: soar over the open ocean for weeks at a time,
Speaker 1: such as albatross, petrols, and shear waters. As far as
Speaker 1: we know, the largest bird ever to fly was the
Speaker 1: polygornous sandersy, which lived twenty five to twenty eight million
Speaker 1: years ago and was twice as large as the biggest
Speaker 1: bird living today, with a wingspan of twenty four ft
Speaker 1: or over seven ms. The seabirds can accomplish this thanks
Speaker 1: in part to the literally uplifting winds that flow over oceans.
Speaker 1: The Indian condor, however, mostly relies on up drafts high
Speaker 1: in the Andes Mountains across much of western South America.
Speaker 1: The problem with being such a huge bird is that
Speaker 1: it makes getting off the ground or even flapping those
Speaker 1: giant wings in flight a bit of an ordeal. Soaring
Speaker 1: is easy once they're up in the sky, and that's
Speaker 1: mainly what Andian condors do. They just float like hang
Speaker 1: gliders in the air currents, sometimes surveying the ground for
Speaker 1: dead animals to eat as it's a scavenger, and sometimes
Speaker 1: just having a nap. But this means that taking off
Speaker 1: is the most costly part of the bird's overall energy supply,
Speaker 1: a sign Tists have always known that they spend very
Speaker 1: little time flapping their wings, but a study published in
Speaker 1: July in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Speaker 1: found the Antian condors flap their wings a sum total
Speaker 1: of almost never. Not only did the researchers find that
Speaker 1: the colossal birds only flap their wings around one percent
Speaker 1: of their total flight time. They discovered a bird could
Speaker 1: fly for five hours and more than a hundred miles
Speaker 1: or a hundred and fifty kilometers without flapping them once.
Speaker 1: The research team found that weather didn't affect how much
Speaker 1: flapping the condors were doing. Study co author Hannah Williams,
Speaker 1: a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Animal Behavior,
Speaker 1: said in a press release. This suggests that decisions about
Speaker 1: when and where to land are crucial, as not only
Speaker 1: do condors need to be able to take off again,
Speaker 1: but unnecessary landings will add significantly to their overall flight costs,
Speaker 1: all of which means that Indian condors must understand how
Speaker 1: to use thermals thermals being invisible patterns and bubbles of
Speaker 1: air moving all around in the atmosphere to their advantage,
Speaker 1: and they must understand this much better than scientists previously
Speaker 1: gave them credit for. Today's episode was written by Jesselyn
Speaker 1: Shields and produced by Tyler Clang. For more on this
Speaker 1: and lots of other high flying topics, visit how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Brain Stuff is a production of I
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Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.