Richard Towell
There are lots of completely different species of kingfisher, and people who eat fish hunt by repeatedly diving head-first into the water after they spot tasty prey with out struggling mind accidents like concussions. It seems that diving kingfishers have a number of modified genes related to eating regimen and mind construction, in accordance with a new paper revealed within the journal Communications Biology—notably mutations in genes associated to the tau proteins that assist stabilize neuron construction, though they are often dangerous if too many construct up.
“I realized lots about tau proteins once I was the concussion supervisor of my son’s hockey staff,” stated co-author Shannon Hackett, affiliate curator of birds on the Subject Museum. “I began to marvel, why don’t kingfishers die as a result of their brains flip to mush? There’s gotta be one thing they’re doing that protects them from the damaging influences of repeatedly touchdown on their heads on the water’s floor.”
It isn’t the primary time scientists have contemplated this query, not only for kingfishers, however for different birds like gannets and woodpeckers. As an example, physicists at Virginia Tech studied diving gannets again in 2014 (publishing their conclusions in 2016), which fold their wings again as they dive, hitting the water with their complete physique to snag underwater prey. From a physics standpoint, we’re speaking about an elastic physique hitting the floor of water as quick as 55 MPH. The stress of transferring from the medium of air to the a lot denser medium of water exerts an enormous pressure on the chicken’s physique, with an affect akin to tornadoes hitting the water. But regardless of the stress on their our bodies, gannets (just like the kingfisher) handle the feat time and again with out harm, particularly concussions.
So Sunny Jung and his staff snagged a deceased gannet from the Smithsonian’s Pure Historical past Museum and froze it, then dropped the chicken repeatedly into tanks of water whereas capturing the method with high-speed cameras. (The unfrozen physique was simply too floppy for use within the experiments.) In addition they made 3D-printed fashions of gannets primarily based on CT scans of their specimen and repeated the experiments, which enabled them to fluctuate completely different traits.
Richard Towell
They discovered that the second stage of the diving trajectory was the hazard zone for a diving chicken—when the pinnacle is totally immersed within the water however the physique remains to be within the air—as a result of it produces a really robust compressive pressure on the neck. Gannets have very lengthy necks (half their physique size), which might buckle simply if the birds dive quicker than a sure velocity; gannets have discovered the speedy candy spot for security. They get added safety from the sharp form of their beaks, decreasing the pressure on the physique.
