Penguin

thingiverse

Like many birds, penguins must travel a long way between their feeding and breeding grounds to escape extreme environments and predators. Rather than relying on their ability to fly, they dive underwater, making them vulnerable to being seen as unusual creatures by scientists who cannot understand why the birds gave up flying altogether in favor of improved diving abilities. Birds cannot be both excellent divers and flyers at the same time; flying requires too much energy that is weakened when animals adapt to life in water. In recent research conducted by biologists Kyle Elliott, researchers from the University of Manitoba Winnipeg examined species of seabirds still with a little flying ability left. The pelagic cormorant and thick-billed murre were two such birds studied in their habitat. These birds had devices on them that tracked time, depth and temperature as well as tags to measure their energy expenditure for swimming and flying, so the scientists could study the differences between flying and diving animals in terms of the way they move. To do this, researchers injected water tagged with isotope and took a snapshot afterwards which helped work out exactly how much gas had escaped and energy had been used. When researchers compared results to geese and penguins already studied earlier, it turned out that seabirds were expending large amounts more energy on flying - up until now the most energy-costly in the air. But while these birds still put plenty of work into their diving, cormorants which swam with feet only paid an astonishing amount in relation to what size bird would typically be required for a given energy requirement by other water-dwelling animals; in particular they discovered this is exactly what was observed when trying out thick-billed murre whose bodies moved much faster underwater as a consequence of flapping. On one side lies evolutionary history that makes both creatures more specialized - making flying harder, or possibly requiring them grow bigger to reduce wind resistance. This isn't however all about aerodynamics since we find two entirely separate species doing things very differently, leading us straight towards some difficult questions: Do these species indeed require less heat during dives as it turns out now or should there actually be greater focus put on energy losses due cold? These issues will have significant impact for scientists when thinking through which evolutionary paths led penguins lose their ability to fly entirely while also taking account factors that would result from reduced temperatures in their new aquatic environment where staying warm becomes a priority over saving fuel used up swimming rather than flying high overhead.