How Long Can Andean Condors Fly Without Flapping Their WIngs?

Andean condors are seriously fuel efficient -- they only flap their wings for one percent of their total time in the air! Learn more about these amazing birds in today's episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff,
Lauren bogel Bomb Here. Imagine your average three year old
human child, something around three ft or a meter tall,
probably covered in jam. Now imagine that child trying to
get off the ground with a pair of wings. They

(00:21):
have to be pretty big wings. Welcome to the plight
of the Andean condor, species name Voltore griffiths, the heaviest
flying bird in the world, weighing in it up to
thirty three pounds or fifteen kilos. They keep their heavy
bodies in the air with some of the longest wings
in the world. Their wingspan can range over ten ft long,

(00:43):
that's over three meters. There are only a handful of
birds currently living on our planet that have larger wingspans,
and they're all pelagic birds. Polagic birds being seabirds that
soar over the open ocean for weeks at a time,
such as albatross, petrols, and shear waters. As far as
we know, the largest bird ever to fly was the

(01:04):
polygornous sandersy, which lived twenty five to twenty eight million
years ago and was twice as large as the biggest
bird living today, with a wingspan of twenty four ft
or over seven ms. The seabirds can accomplish this thanks
in part to the literally uplifting winds that flow over oceans.
The Indian condor, however, mostly relies on up drafts high

(01:25):
in the Andes Mountains across much of western South America.
The problem with being such a huge bird is that
it makes getting off the ground or even flapping those
giant wings in flight a bit of an ordeal. Soaring
is easy once they're up in the sky, and that's
mainly what Andian condors do. They just float like hang

(01:45):
gliders in the air currents, sometimes surveying the ground for
dead animals to eat as it's a scavenger, and sometimes
just having a nap. But this means that taking off
is the most costly part of the bird's overall energy supply,
a sign Tists have always known that they spend very
little time flapping their wings, but a study published in
July in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

(02:08):
found the Antian condors flap their wings a sum total
of almost never. Not only did the researchers find that
the colossal birds only flap their wings around one percent
of their total flight time. They discovered a bird could
fly for five hours and more than a hundred miles
or a hundred and fifty kilometers without flapping them once.

(02:29):
The research team found that weather didn't affect how much
flapping the condors were doing. Study co author Hannah Williams,
a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Animal Behavior,
said in a press release. This suggests that decisions about
when and where to land are crucial, as not only
do condors need to be able to take off again,

(02:51):
but unnecessary landings will add significantly to their overall flight costs,
all of which means that Indian condors must understand how
to use thermals thermals being invisible patterns and bubbles of
air moving all around in the atmosphere to their advantage,
and they must understand this much better than scientists previously

(03:11):
gave them credit for. Today's episode was written by Jesselyn
Shields and produced by Tyler Clang. For more on this
and lots of other high flying topics, visit how stuff
works dot com. Brain Stuff is a production of I
Heart Radio. Or more podcasts to my heart radio, visit
the iHeart Radio app Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen

(03:31):
to your favorite shows.