> Did you know that albatrosses have a higher heart rate while resting on the beach than while flying?
Even if flying takes very little effort as described, why would the resting heart rate be higher?
Even if flying takes very little effort as described, why would the resting heart rate be higher?
But it’s not even that flying takes little effort, it’s that it takes no effort. The bird does not use any of its own potential energy for flight, it extracts it from the wind gradient over the ocean in the course of flying, and turns it into kinetic energy. It would tire too quickly otherwise, and would be unable to make the transpacific journey to breeding grounds.