How Penguins Move in a Group

(YouTube link)

Emperor penguins huddle together to keep warm in the cold Antarctic winter -as anyone who's seen Happy Feet knows. The way penguins arrange themselves in clusters and move is quite efficient for a flock of birds waddling on ice. New Scientist compares it to the way cars move in a traffic jam. But if you've ever been in a traffic jam, you know that human drivers don't employ much logic at all.

The model also shows that rather than simply being caused by cold penguins pushing in, waves can originate from birds at many different spots in the huddle, as long as their steps exceed a 2-centimetre threshold distance. This is about twice the thickness of the penguin feather layer. "That means a perfectly compact huddle tries to maintain each bird's maximum fluffiness and insulation," Zitterbart says.

Waves that started in two different groups can merge, helping smaller huddles grow into large throngs of thousands of birds that can withstand temperatures as low as -50 °C and wind gusts of 200 kilometres per hour.

Further research involves putting fake high-tech eggs on the feet of some penguins who do not have real eggs, in order to measure penguin movement more precisely. And oh yes, enjoy the incongruous dramatic music that accompanies this science video. -via Time Newsfeed

Love cute animals? View more at Lifestyles of the Cute and Cuddly blog

Comments (0)

Yeah, I'd add a hand crank to that retrieving the kite thing. It wouldn't be that hard, so then you could repeat the process over and over. Just add cheap labor, or in the case of post-apocalypse, the young, and generate away! :)
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Again, in post-apoc world, you don't want to draw attention to yourself, plus there's the potential for mobility with this design. May have to break camp and head to the mountains.
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I'm having trouble grasping how this is an improvemenet over a windmill. I suppose you could let the kite out, have it collapse, and then have a wind-powered device to reel it back in; but then why not just use the wind-driven device to generate all the energy in the first place?
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The advantage is that they fly "to altitudes of 2,600 feet, where wind streams are four times as strong as they are near ground-based wind turbines."
The kite collapses when it reaches the end of its tether, so it is easier to rewind.
What happens when the wind stops and the huge kite crashes at the end of a half mile tether?
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A 'laddermill' would even be better: it is fully wind driven (so yes, it's a modern version of the windmill. Only much bigger and much more energy efficient.

http://www.lr.tudelft.nl/live/pagina.jsp?id=8d16d19a-e942-45aa-9b52-48deb9312e92
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