A few years before NASA astronaut Jessica Meir began learning to fly a spacecraft for her upcoming trip to the International Space Station, she was in flight-training of a different kind: teaching bar-headed geese how to fly in a wind tunnel at the University of British Columbia.
The goal was to understand how the birds — who are famed for their long migrations between Mongolia, China and India — frequently fly in severely low oxygen at extreme altitudes between 5000 to 6000m, or even as high as the summits surrounding Mt. Everest, which are at roughly 8500m. The findings of the research were published today in eLife.
“Flapping wings in flight is very metabolically costly and requires an enormous amount of oxygen — and to do that where the air is so thin is remarkable,” said Meir, who led the study as a postdoctoral fellow at UBC zoology. “We found that the geese maintained flight in extremely low oxygen levels in the wind tunnel by reducing their metabolism compared to when flying in normal oxygen levels.”
While previous research suggested the geese have adaptations that allow them to maximize oxygen use at high altitudes, this study is the first to comprehensively measure their physiology during flight at simulated altitudes in a wind tunnel and gauge the associated metabolic costs.
Continue reading at University of British Columbia.
Image via University of British Columbia.