The Wandering Albatross is a Stool Pigeon
We have a pair of articles to ponder today. First, we can take another look at how the Master Engineer designed the wandering albatross (who is reluctant to ask for directions). Expect to see an adult weighing in the neighborhood of 18 pounds (8.16 kg), with a wing span of 10 feet (305 cm.) That's a big birdie.
The albatross was designed to ride the air currents and travel huge distances over its lifetime, but becoming airborne requires far more energy than flying. They also need to make decisions and adjustments for weather patterns and deal with high-speed winds. There was a recent study about how the albatross uses the wind more than experts previously realized.
The term "stool pigeon" is not used much nowadays, but it usually refers to an information. This was often a criminal who would make a deal with law enforcement about activities of a criminal gang and such. This same wandering albatross has been collateral damage from illegal fishing activities in international waters. You'd think that there is no law beyond a country's limits, but there are treaties in place regarding overfishing, which threatens the populations of fish.
In a bit of serendipity, special tracking units were placed on birds to signal their locations. Although they didn't respond to "One-Adam-Bird, One-Adam-Bird, check for furtive behavior...", the signals also helped track down illegal activities.
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| Credit: Flickr / dfaulder (CC BY 2.0) |
Wandering albatrosses have the largest wingspan of any living bird, so they live much of life soaring above the oceans. With their wings—and a lot of winds—it is no wonder that their use of wind-power would be studied by scientists, as a recent report illustrates. And, because albatross males are bigger, they need more wind.To finish reading, glide over to "Wandering Albatross: Wide Wings on the Winds". (A similar article can be found at "The Energy-Efficient Albatross".) I'd be much obliged if you'd come back for the next article.
The term "stool pigeon" is not used much nowadays, but it usually refers to an information. This was often a criminal who would make a deal with law enforcement about activities of a criminal gang and such. This same wandering albatross has been collateral damage from illegal fishing activities in international waters. You'd think that there is no law beyond a country's limits, but there are treaties in place regarding overfishing, which threatens the populations of fish.
In a bit of serendipity, special tracking units were placed on birds to signal their locations. Although they didn't respond to "One-Adam-Bird, One-Adam-Bird, check for furtive behavior...", the signals also helped track down illegal activities.
You can observe the full article by clicking on "Albatrosses Aid Law Enforcement". Albatross lives matter.Recently, albatrosses were used for a surprising and unintended purpose: catching criminals.On behalf of BBC News, Samantha Patrick reported on her tagged and satellite-tracked albatrosses. . .These albatrosses help Patrick gather information on fish-poaching pirates who are routinely guilty of harming albatrosses as by-catch casualties. (“By-catch” means that one species is accidentally caught while fishing for another species.). . .The spy-like surveillance program began, Patrick says, as an attempt to track the albatrosses who were vulnerable to fishing by-catch risks in the open ocean.