Comments on: Why Do Birds Fly South for the Winter?

By: AJW

AJW — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 04:07:21 +0000

Birds also fly North for the winter!

Migratory birds swap hemispheres each time the weather starts getting cooler, so they live in perpetual summer.

Some of them even do their breeding and fledging in the Southern hemisphere, so their first journey is northwards.

By: Logician

Logician — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 03:59:30 +0000

So, Bubba, you do not have an explanation of your own. You are merely convinced that whatever the other people are saying, they must be wrong.

That sounds like a slavish adherence to a doctrine…

By: Bubba

Bubba — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:02:09 +0000

j hillary:
Don’t worry – you won’t spawn another Creationist ‘debate.’ Creationists are imbeciles who try desperately to equate science with religion, and they can never succeed. It doesn’t matter what scientists don’t know, or don’t know yet. That scientists don’t have an answer to a particular question does not strengthen Creationist ‘debate.’ Science is an on-going process of learning. Creationism is purely story-telling.

By: Christine

Christine — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:01:50 +0000

When geese fly in a V formation why is one side always longer than the other?

…because there are more geese on that side. :)

By: Joel

Joel — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 12:43:16 +0000

This may seem like a dumb question, but do birds in the southern hemisphere fly north for the winter? I.e. do all birds fly north and south at the same time every year (think about it– northern birds would fly south for their winter, the same time southern birds would fly south for their summer)?

By: CJ

CJ — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 00:28:48 +0000

Bodegas have food? I thought they sold weed.

By: Aurora

Aurora — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 05:18:39 +0000

do humans have magnetite?

By: j hillary

j hillary — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 22:02:20 +0000

Re: Why do they migrate?

So how did the first bird know where to go? Not to spawn another Creationist debate, but this essay has me intrigued about how migration fits in the evolution theory. How did the first one start? How did the first birds know their was food in S. America, or wherever, to begin with? Better yet, how did they know there would be a S. America there when they got there? And then once they figured that out, how do they come up with migration groupings? Are they all just one big extended family? Is it a social network that joins up like a Club Med cruise? Or is their a clique that forms and they choose a pecking order who gets the aisle seats? How did migration all start? And why not land creatures? It’s not like we don’t have the same needs for food and warmth. No doubt it takes longer, but if you don’t know how far you’re going to begin with, what’s stopping you? Do we all have this magnetite too and we’ve just trained ourselves not to listen? If humans were enclosed in dark rooms and asked to face south, would we know?

How fish developed fins and birds developed wings is awe-inspiring to begin with but still imaginable, but to figure out how migration is actually written into the genes is mind-boggling. How does evolution write, “Go to eat guava in Acapulco in November,” into the genes of something that’s never been to Acapulco, and never seen a guava, via a lump of rock that forms in the brain. Also, does the sensitivity of the magnetite increase under certain environmental conditions, or does the magnetic resonance of their destination increase on the other end, or both?

Fascinating article. More questions than answers. Please floss soon.

By: Jim

Jim — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 17:04:10 +0000

I think it’s incredibly cool that you could put a flock of birds in a planetarium and get useful data…

By: Angelia

Angelia — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 13:46:31 +0000

Zugunruhe!! My seasonal restlessness has a fancy name, I’m sooo happy. I’m so inserting this word into every conversation today.