Penguins are birds that nature has deprived of the ability to fly. There are several reasons for this injustice. So why don't penguins fly?
No cavities in the bones
The bones of any flying bird are hollow, which makes them weightless, making it easier for birds to take off and soar in the air. Penguin bones are not light, they are very dense and more similar to the skeleton of mammals, including humans. Perhaps that's why people don't fly?
Wings not suitable for flight
Penguins do not fly because their wings do not have long flight feathers that allow birds to float freely in the air; they do not bend and are more reminiscent of a fish fin than a bird's snout.
The bones and muscles of penguin limbs are endowed with greater massiveness, which helps them cope well with water masses when moving underwater. Flying birds do not need to use as much effort to navigate the air.
Anatomical feature
Nature has taken care of the Arctic inhabitants: penguins have a thick two-centimeter layer of fat under their skin, and the bird’s body is covered with small and hard waterproof feathers, which perfectly protects them from hypothermia under water. Only these representatives of the bird world have a streamlined body, ideally adapted for underwater movements.
Evolution due to changes in habitat
Researchers never tire of arguing about the origin of penguins: it is believed that in the past these birds were able to fly, but over time they lost this ability. The reason for this lies in the change in living conditions: there is an urgent need to obtain deep-sea food.
Nature did its job, and gradually, under the constant need to dive and swim, penguins evolved into swimmers, while the ability to fly was lost as unnecessary. The wings became like oars, the feathers looked like scales, and the body acquired powerful muscle mass on the sternum and thighs.
Thus, the differences between penguins and flying birds are very significant and are determined by the need to dive and swim underwater. In addition, penguins have a number of differences in structure:
- their ears are tightly closed with short, hard feathers to prevent water from getting inside;
- The cornea of the eyes is almost flat, which makes the vision of penguins maximally adapted to changes in light when diving to depth and at the same time contributes to mild myopia on land.
And yet the categorical belief that penguins do not fly at all is erroneous. An ordinary penguin, escaping from a pursuing predator, can rise into the air to a height of up to two meters, while a species of penguin called Adelie can fly to a height of three meters.
In this they are helped by well-developed flippers, which make frequent helical movements at the moment of jumping. And if such maneuvers are carried out in the water column, the penguin can jump out of the sea, reaching a speed of up to 20 km/h.
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Penguins are funny and slightly awkward birds. Adults and children look with equal interest at how the crowd of these “lackeys” rushes towards the ocean! And with what incredible grace these creatures move underwater, soaring on their small wings! And here a completely fair question arises: “Why doesn’t the penguin fly?” Let's try to cover this problem in a little more detail.
Initially, scientists assumed that they were only because they evolved from flightless ancestors. This opinion was facilitated by the fact that the same cormorants fly and swim well, moving on their wings in two environments.
However, this opinion has now been refuted. The fact is that scientists noticed one small detail while studying photos of the penguin and his “associates.” It turned out that the above-mentioned cormorants can move equally poorly in the air and in the water. The ability to fly in such “versatile” birds is inferior to that of ordinary “lords of the sky,” and the ability to swim is even more mediocre and cannot be compared with artistic ballet in the water of penguins.
This is where scientists put forward the theory of evolutionary expediency: why fly if it will still turn out badly? When asking why the penguin does not fly, researchers forgot about the real need for flight. After all, most representatives of this species live in the very harsh conditions of Antarctica. To survive in the harsh local winters, they have to store huge amounts of fat. Naturally, from an evolutionary point of view, this approach to survival is much more justified, since it allows the animal to go without food for a long time during the most difficult and cold winter days.
So, modern researchers have an excellent answer to the question of why the penguin does not fly: this species simply abandoned flight in favor of more pressing needs. As you can see, these birds did not fail, maintaining their population and habitat.
However, science has many questions that make a hypothetical flying penguin seem completely unimportant in comparison. Most of the inconsistencies are related precisely to the ability to dive: the mechanism that allows large species to dive to impressive depths is still unclear. Thus, the famous one is able to dive half a kilometer deep and stay there for 20 minutes!
The question is not only about the biochemical processes that allow a large and muscular “emperor” to do without air for such a long time, but also about how such a large and largely land-dwelling organism can withstand monstrous pressure drops and avoid
The latter is especially relevant. After all, people cannot dive to a depth of 100 meters without protective equipment, and the dive itself, together with the ascent to the surface, must be completed within a short period of time. How does our hero cope with this? Scientists don't know yet... So it's time to stop wondering why the penguin doesn't fly. It is better to apply your mental abilities to solving more pressing and complex problems.
- No cavities in the bones. The bones of any flying bird are hollow, which makes them weightless, making it easier for birds to take off and soar in the air. Penguin bones are not light, they are very dense and more similar to the skeleton of mammals, including humans. Perhaps that's why people don't fly?
- Wings not suitable for flight. Penguins do not fly because their wings do not have long flight feathers that allow birds to float freely in the air; they do not bend and are more reminiscent of a fish fin than a bird's snout. The bones and muscles of penguin limbs are endowed with greater massiveness, which helps them cope well with water masses when moving underwater. Flying birds do not need to use as much effort to navigate the air.
- Anatomical feature. Nature has taken care of the Arctic inhabitants: penguins have a thick two-centimeter layer of fat under their skin, and the bird’s body is covered with small and hard waterproof feathers, which perfectly protects them from hypothermia under water. Only these representatives of the bird world have a streamlined body, ideally adapted for underwater movements.
- Evolution due to changes in habitat. Researchers never tire of arguing about the origin of penguins: it is believed that in the past these birds were able to fly, but over time they lost this ability. The reason for this lies in the change in living conditions: there is an urgent need to obtain deep-sea food. Nature did its job, and gradually, under the constant need to dive and swim, penguins evolved into swimmers, while the ability to fly was lost as unnecessary. The wings became like oars, the feathers looked like scales, and the body acquired powerful muscle mass on the sternum and thighs.
Thus, the differences between penguins and flying birds are very significant and are determined by the need to dive and swim underwater.
Features of penguins
In addition, penguins have a number of differences in structure:
- their ears are tightly closed with short, hard feathers to prevent water from getting inside;
- The cornea of the eyes is almost flat, which makes the vision of penguins maximally adapted to changes in light when diving to depth and at the same time contributes to mild myopia on land.
Can a penguin still fly?
The categorical belief that penguins do not fly at all is erroneous. An ordinary penguin, escaping from a pursuing predator, can rise into the air to a height of up to two meters, while a species of penguin called Adelie can fly to a height of three meters. In this they are helped by well-developed flippers, which make frequent helical movements at the moment of jumping. And if such maneuvers are carried out in the water column, the penguin can jump out of the sea, reaching a speed of up to 20 km/h.
Scientists' opinion
Penguins don't fly for one simple reason: they swim. A new study published in the journal PNAS shows that birds cannot be good flyers and swimmers at the same time - this is energetically disadvantageous. The colonies where penguins nest are separated from the places where they look for food by enormous distances. And the arduous treks that penguins undertake have long puzzled scientists, who have pondered the question of why they do it on foot, abandoning flights that would save them a lot of time.
In search of answers, biologists turned to other seabirds: Bering cormorants ( Phalacrocorax pelagicus) and thick-billed guillemots ( Uria lomvia). The former swim underwater with the help of webbed feet, the latter also use wings. Both birds fly, although guillemots have difficulty doing so. “They're terrible flyers,” says Kyle Elliott, a graduate student at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada, and one of the study's authors. “They beat their wings very, very quickly and have absolutely no ability to land.”
To study the thick-billed guillemots that nest in northern Canada, researchers armed themselves with guns with rubber bullets to scare off polar bears and lived in houses surrounded by an electric fence. When there were no predators nearby, the researchers lassoed guillemots and injected isotopes into their blood using a syringe, which can be used to calculate the energy costs of diving and flying. They also equipped the birds with sensory devices that allowed them to determine their body temperature, how deep they dived, and how much time they spent underwater, in the air, and on land.
It turned out that being a guillemot is not so easy. Birds spend more energy per minute of flight than other birds, including the bar-headed goose, which was considered the champion in energy consumption ( Anser indicus), which flies over the Himalayas.
To dive better, thick-billed guillemots need to either reduce their wings or increase their body size, but in both cases they will no longer be able to fly.
Scientists believe that this is the result of the fact that the wings of guillemots are still designed for flight - under water they create braking. In addition, their small bodies, light enough to lift off the ground, cool faster than bulkier penguins. “In general, to dive better, they need to shrink their wings or grow themselves, but both options would make flight impossible,” says ornithologist Robert Ricklefs of the University of Missouri in St. Louis (USA), co-author of the study. According to the scientist, guillemots really function at the edge of the bird's capabilities. “The main message of our study is trade-off,” he says. “You can’t have a wing that is equally good at moving in the water and in the air.”
About 70 million years ago, the ancestors of penguins abandoned flight in favor of efficient underwater hunting. Gradually they became larger - this allowed them to dive deeper, swim faster, stay under water longer, and therefore catch larger prey and in larger quantities. By giving up flight, penguins became larger, which allowed them to dive deeper, swim faster, stay under water longer, and therefore catch larger prey in larger quantities.
conclusions
Evolution has deprived penguins of the method of moving through the air as it was too energy-consuming. Instead, birds were able to dive to greater depths, spending more time underwater. At that time, sea fish was the most profitable diet for penguins, which led to the fact that the ability to fly was lost in favor of gliding underwater.
The ancestors of penguins flew during the time when dinosaurs lived on the planet, however, according to Daniel Ksepka from the Bruce Museum in Connecticut (USA), they lost this ability soon after the extinction of the largest dinosaurs (judging by the found remains, about 60 million years ago). During their migration to the seas and oceans and due to the need to adapt to new hunting conditions, penguins' wings changed, becoming shorter and stiffer, which was necessary in order to row better. The muscles became more developed and an additional layer of feathers appeared on the chest. The birds have also increased in size. As a result, they stopped flying, but became a unique species in the difficult conditions of their new habitat, since they were able to hunt large sea fish.
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Sources
- http://www.vokrugsveta.ru/article/199075/
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Penguins are flightless birds, but they can take to the air if they need to.
In particular, this technique helps penguins escape from natural enemies, such as leopard seals or killer whales, and also get out of deep water onto a rocky shore.
The mechanism that allows penguins to take flight has not yet been studied. However, now a group of Irish scientists have found that before making a jump, these birds use their wings to create a large number of air bubbles in the water and thus overcome the resistance of the water, obtaining jet acceleration.
Scientists made this discovery by watching in slow motion video footage filmed for the popular BBC children's program Blue Peter, which also talks about the animal world.
Neither fly nor crawl
Image caption King penguins can rise almost half a meter above the waterAt first glance, it seems impossible for penguins to rise into the air above water. These plump birds are known for their awkward, waddling gait.
Their bodies are ideally suited for movement in water - the bones of penguins, unlike other birds, are similar to the bones of mammals, and the wings are connected to the body so that they can be operated underwater, like propellers.
However, many members of the penguin family can take to the air.
Due to their body shape and inability to crawl, penguins have difficulty getting ashore, especially where there are rocks. And sometimes it is not at all possible to rise from the depths of the sea to an ice block.
That's why penguins learned to jump out. First, they rise to the surface, break through the edge of the ice, momentarily break away from the water, and, shaking themselves off, land on their chest - already on dry land.
Smaller species, such as the Adélie penguin, can fly 2-3 meters into the air and then land on sharp rocks without a scratch.
But larger representatives of the family, such as the largest, king penguins, rise above the surface of the water by only 20-45 cm. Although this is enough for them.
Air bubbles
Image caption When penguins jump out of the water, they leave a trail of bubbles behind them.Biologists were most concerned about one question: why do these birds, when jumping out of the water, leave a “tail” of air bubbles behind them? No one could understand what these bubbles were or where they came from.
However, five years ago a group of biologists in Ireland decided to tackle this problem. It was in the city of Cork, where two scientists - Professor Roger Newes from Bangor University and Professor John Davenport from University College Cork - met in a pub on the eve of a scientific symposium and realized that neither of them knew the answer to the question that was occupying them so much .
Scientists requested materials from the BBC television program Blue Peter recording the behavior of penguins. They watched the film frame by frame, analyzing the speed and angle of rise from the water, thereby calculating the biomechanical formula for the birds' movement.
This analysis resulted in several interesting discoveries. First, the air bubbles released by the penguins did not come from the lungs. They were formed as a result of the work of the wings.
"We were shocked by this observation," said Professor Davenport.
The researchers also concluded that air bubbles seem to form a “shirt” around the birds’ bodies when they soar above the surface of the water at a speed of 19 km per hour.
To carry out further research, Irish scientists joined forces with Professor Paul Larsen from Denmark, a specialist in mathematics and fluid dynamics. The result of their joint efforts was published in May 2011.
Zubareva Valeria
While studying birds, we wondered why penguins don't fly. And indeed, since these are birds and they have wings, isn’t it logical for them to soar through the sky? We studied the life of penguins and their methods of movement in space, and based on the information received and observations of the penguin Lolo from the cartoon "The Adventures of the Little Penguin Lolo" we found the answer to our question.
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WHY DON'T PENGUINS FLY? Completed by: Student of 1st “G” class Gymnasium 83 Zubareva V.L. Class teacher: Alekseeva V.M.
Goals: Find out why penguins don't fly. Objectives: Find out where penguins live. Find out what they eat and how they get their food. Study the structural features of the body of penguins. Find out how penguins' habitat, their food and their ability to fly are connected.
Penguins live on the coast of the open seas of the Southern Hemisphere. The largest number of penguins is found in Antarctica and its adjacent islands. The warmest habitat for penguins is the Galapagos Islands, located near the equator. Penguin habitat.
Penguin food. Penguins feed on fish - Antarctic silverfish, anchovies or sardines, as well as crustaceans such as krill, which they hunt by swallowing directly under water.
Penguin body structure. Penguins have a streamlined body shape, which is ideal for moving in water. Narrow and small wings serve as fins. Large, short feet perform a steering function in the water. Penguin bones are dense and similar to the bones of mammals (dolphins and seals) and do not contain internal cavities, like those of flying birds.
Conclusion Over time, penguins had to gradually adapt to life in conditions of constant cold and the need to get their food in the water. The main food of penguins is fish. There is simply no other food in the penguin habitats. In order to successfully fish, penguins simply had to become good swimmers. So, their wings, too short, thick and heavy to fly, became excellent fins. Thus, these birds have become excellent swimmers who can row very quickly and control their body, which in turn gives these birds the ability to obtain food for themselves. Thus, I learned why penguins do not fly like other birds.