Migrating Birds Take Hundreds of Powernaps.

Ant writes "MSNBC reports that to help make up for sleep lost during marathon night flights, migratory birds take hundreds of powernaps during the day, each lasting only a few seconds, a new study suggests. Every autumn, Swainson's thrushes fly up to 3,000 miles from their breeding grounds in northern Canada and Alaska to winter in Central and South America. Come spring, the birds make the long trek back. The birds fly mostly at night and often for long hours at a time, leaving little time for sleep."

Maybe..

[l0cust]

Maybe the birds were getting those drowsy sessions and 'power naps' BECAUSE they were caged and being subjected to go through utterly boring and long observation periods when they would rather be flying over the ocean somewhere. Or they just closed their eyes every few minutes to curse the researchers to hell for caging them in the first place.

But seriously, studies of this kind tend to lose credibility when they start predicting the free behaviour of species while testing them under captive conditions. Going by this logic, I can say that lions in jungle start rattling the nearest metal bars or objects they can find when they feel hungry because I observed this behaviour in a bunch of lions in the nearest zoo. I know its stretching the point a bit, and that 'some' behaviour show consistence irrespective of the state of the subject animal/bird, BUT trying to deduce migratory behaviour (out of all things) from a bunch of observational data collected from birds in cages is stretching it too far IMHO.

Re:Why they sleep only a few seconds

[Anonymous Coward]

Birds don't have money.

Re:How do they avoid crashing?

[SpaghettiPattern]

the approximate distance it would fall is s = ut + 1/2at**2 ... 0+1/2*32*9*9 feet ... 1296 feet.

A few theories from me as an armchair scientist. If it has a way to lock it's wings it will fall slower. It will loose several seconds of direction control but maybe it has a mechanism to compensate.

Re:Urban legend alert

[Red Flayer]

Urban legend -- albatrosses sleep on the surface, not in flight.

Poppycock. That is obviously not an urban legend -- it's a maritime legend.

Sheesh. When did all widely-believed falsehoods become urban legends, instead of just plain old legends, myths, etc?

Re:Urban legend alert

[RealGrouchy]

Urban legend -- albatrosses sleep on the surface, not in flight.

Poppycock. That is obviously not an urban legend -- it's a maritime legend.

On the contrary. Maritimers know their stuff about birds; it's the urban population that makes these things up. :P

- RG>