Can someone fact check this
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They would hit the mountains at that height, and the FAA requires them to be up above airplane traffic anyways. After that, it gets crowded right above the launch pads, and sometimes there's shooting stars and stuff, so some satellites are forced to go even higher.
Wait, which mountains are between the us and Europe again?
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So 20 miles per hour across 24 hours gets us a distance of 480 miles.
Going from Europe to the Americas by way of Scotland and Iceland is going to be a bit of a problem for that bird, as it can expect pretty consistent 10-20kt headwinds for the entire journey. America to Europe by that route is a comparatively easy trip.
I doubt that owls are capable of effective dynamic soaring, but that would drastically reduce the energy requirements.
Owls are librulz, they only want to escape the us, not return
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An owl emitting 300 kilowatts of power would explode in a ball of flame that would light up the neighbourhood. I've never seen this happen, so I do have doubts about the numbers given here.
That just means migration is a lie because otherwise you would see explosions
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But they recharge on power lines, that's just science.
They do not ... owls are solar powered, that's why they are nocturnal.... DUH.
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Wait, which mountains are between the us and Europe again?
It's either over the mountains, or your owl will have to thread the needle between the Azores and Greenland.
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Power is not a measure of work.
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The barn owl (the most common owl on the planet) weighs max 700g (listed on Table 1 here https://birdsoftheworld.org/bow/species/brnowl/cur/appearance#meas but you need a subscription). So like 1.5 lbs.
Birds don’t really migrate east/west, and owls hardly migrate at all, and only a few species, not really barn owls. I’m not sure if there is an owl that migrates like that but even if it was true, tiny ruby throated hummingbirds migrate nonstop across the gulf. Weight doesn’t really matter.
Kilowatt is a rate of energy, not an amount. So let’s calculate that. And energy use in owls is documented on birds of the world as well.
Flight speed is 80 km/h https://birdsoftheworld.org/bow/species/brnowl/cur/behavior#locomEnergy use is 360.4 kJ/d, let’s triple that for continual flight across the ocean (idk I’m just making that up since this is all fake anyway), so 1081.2, we’ll round up to 1100.
Estimates of daily food consumption rates are limited. One captive female consumed a mean of 60.5 g/d over one year, amounting to 10.1% of her mass daily; consumption varied from 46.4 g/d in the warmest periods to 74.0 g/d in the coldest times (147). Two American Barn Owl consumed a mean of 74.1 g/d over a 10 d trial in August; it was estimated that energy use was 360.4 kJ/d (148). Other measures of daily food intake for wild American Barn Owl estimated from pellet contents range from 110 g/d in summer in Colorado (113) to a mean of 150 g/d over 1 yr in California (149). The mean gross energy intake for 4 (1 female, 3 males) sedentary American Barn Owl was 68.9 kcal/d; mean existence energy was 54.6 kcal/d, resulting in 79.3% efficiency in food utilization (150).
I just measured across from Massachusetts to Portugal, around 3000 mi or 4800 km. About 60 hours, so 1100 kJ/24h / 24/h x 60 h = 2750kJ = 657265.774 Calorie.
So yeah, very fake.
wait
is this a shitpost?
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Why would the owls be migrating East/ West? So e they just go north/ south?
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Why is the owl flying across the Atlantic?
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Owls don't weigh 16 pounds (except for fat owls). 300 kilowatts is a rate of energy, not a total quantity of energy. 300 kilowatt hours (which is possibly what they meant?) Is only around 260,000 kilocalories (which is called "calories" on food labels because units of measure were made up by humans). According to an extremely naive google search, that would only take an owl 5 years to consume, rather than 10. If the original number were correct, that would mean this owl eats 8,000 calories per day. Which is not typical.
Onto the broader point, the efficiency of birds in flight is not as simple as this image suggests. There is no (useful) formula that takes the weight of a bird and the distance it will fly and tells you how many calories that takes. Birds can fly at different elevations, at different speeds. They can fly with or against the wind. They can change many things about how they fly to be more efficient or less efficient.
If you really want to know how many calories it takes for an owl to cross the ocean, first get the owl to the point of starvation, then bring it on a boat to the middle of the ocean. Feed it a fixed number of Tootsie pops, then sink the boat. With nowhere else to land, the owl will be forced to fly to shore. Based on how far the owl makes it, you can determine how far each tootsie pop allowed it to fly, and derive calories per mile from that.
wrote last edited by [email protected]PLEASE DON'T starve the owl! There is another way: metabolism rate is proportional to the number of O₂ + hydrocarbons → CO₂ + H₂O reactions in the body, which can be measured as the amount of CO₂ created during respiration. For humans, the CO₂ concentration in exhaled air is close to constant, so by inhaling through the nose and exhaling through the mouth into a bag (and not consciously hyper- or hypoventilating), one can get a very good measurement of one's metabolism rate in different scenarios (and the lag is seconds, not hours for nutrition!). This is obviously way more difficult to do with a flying owl (even in a wind tunnel) but perhaps a surgically inserted airflow meter could work, or a closed-loop wind tunnel with very precise measurement of O₂/CO₂ levels. Yes, a flying owl has CO₂ emissions, and so does a running human, but way less than a combustion engine.
Another idea is to measure the carbon and water emitted as weight loss (yes, you lose weight by breathing) but there are other factors that could skew the results such as sweat evaporation, skin shedding etc.
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That just means migration is a lie because otherwise you would see explosions
*owlplosions
it was right there yet you missed it
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Power is not a measure of work.
Tell that to my boss
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Now imagine that owl is carrying a coconut.
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Why is the owl flying across the Atlantic?
The Pacific is too far
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Now imagine that owl is carrying a coconut.
African or European coconut?
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The Pacific is too far
Probably the only correct answer.
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Tell that to my boss
Can I have their number or something I dont know how to contact them
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Tell that to my boss
My boss calls me a power bottom
