Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Bird Migration

Episode Date: February 1, 2023

Where are all those birds flying anyway? How do they decide? When do they do it? All of these questions, and more, are answered in this week's ep.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a Marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. I'm Alex French. And I'm Smedley Butler. Join us for this sordid tale of ambition, treason, and what happens when evil tycoons have too much time on their hands. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. Jerry's here, too, sitting in for Dave. So let's go with short stuff. Go, go, go. This is something I'm surprised we haven't covered succinctly. We may have talked about it before

here and there. But the idea, and I literally thought of this because I saw a flock of birds flying in that beautiful v-pattern. A flock of seagulls? Oh, I wish, because you know, they run so far away. Flying, and I was like, where are those guys going? And what are they doing? And how do they know? It seems a little late. Why are you doing it now? And how do you know how to get there? What the hell is wrong with you? It turns out we know the answers to some of these questions. And we're talking about bird migration. And this comes from our old friends at howstuffworks.com and Aliyah Hoyt, who did, I think, a really great job writing a very succinct article on this cool topic. I thought so, too. Go check it out and read it there. But the notion

about birds flying south for the winter, we should say right off the bat, is like, that's just a very sort of lazy way of putting it. Because there are more than 900 species of birds. And so you're just saying birds flying south. You can't just say that about all birds, because not all birds do fly south. No, they don't. But the ones that do fly south are incredibly fascinating. Because, like you said, all those questions you have, we have a lot of answers to. And the urge to migrate has a name even. That's one of the things I love about this, Chuck. There's some great terms hidden within it. Yeah, one great band name, too, by the way. Migratory restlessness? No. Okay. Photo period? No, those are bad. Okay, I'm going to give them all away. Okay. But the

natural urge, I would guess an unconscious urge, too, if you're a bird, to migrate is called migratory restlessness. And a lot of times, they chalk it up to a change in the length of the day, which is called the photo period. That's right. I don't think we said about 75% of birds do migrate. And it's kind of like two buckets on why you would. This is that first bucket, which is the daylight kind of giving them a cue. And this means that they're, the daylight is giving them a cue. They're not flying south because like, you know, it's getting a little bit chilly and the worms aren't quite what they used to be. But it's more like, hey, the daylight is changing. That's a signal to me. That means we are known as band name

Obligate Migrants. Okay, that's a good one. Pretty good. Yeah, that means that nature is commanding you to go migrate. This isn't any choice that you're making. This is just part of who you are. You migrate as a member of this bird species. Yes. And if you're an obligate migrant, you probably opened up for the talking heads in the 80s, would be my guess. So the good thing about obligate migrants is because it's so hardwired, their behavior is very predictable and easily studied. Like the distance they travel is going to be basically the same year after year generation after generation. When they go is going to be about the same. When they come back, it's going to be about the same. They're just extraordinarily dependable, right? Yeah. The

ones that you can't count on at all are the facultative migrants. And I said it right, I didn't just add an extra syllable. Yeah, not nearly as good of a band name for that reason. It's a little clunky. It is tag clunky. But these are the ones that migrate because they have to. They're really lazy as far as migration goes. Yeah. I mean, they're the ones that take the cues around them. I kind of like them because they're not like, oh, I'm just going to do it because the daylight says so. Okay. They do it because food might be getting short or it might be getting a little chilly for them or whatever. And they basically know we can't stick around here. So let's hit the road, right? Or hit the sky. They're kind of like the surfers of migrating birds.

That's right. I like that. Should we break now? Oh, yeah. Jeez. All right. This is the shorty, my friend. Let's get back to it in a minute. Okay. Well, now when you're on the road driving in your truck, why not learn a thing or two from Josh and Chuck? It's stuff you should know. All right. What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the US and fascism. I'm Ben Bullock. And I'm Alex French. In our newest show, we take a darkly comedic and occasionally ridiculous deep dive into a story that has been buried for nearly a century. We've tracked down exclusive historical records. We've interviewed the world's foremost

experts. We're also bringing you cinematic, historical recreations of moments left out of your history books. I'm Smedley Butler and I got a lot to say. For one, my personal history is raw, inspiring and mind blowing. And for another, do we get the mattresses after we do the ads or do we just have to do the ads? From iHeart Podcast and School of Humans, this is Let's Start a Coup. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. I'm Dr. Romany, and I am back with season two of my podcast, Navigating Narcissism. Narcissists are everywhere, and their toxic behavior and words can cause serious harm to your mental health. In our first season, we heard from Eileen Charlotte, who was love-bombed by the

Tinder swindler. The worst part is that he can only be guilty for stealing the money from me, but he cannot be guilty for the mental part he did, and that's even way worse than the money he took. But I am here to help. As a licensed psychologist and survivor of narcissistic abuse myself, I know how to identify the narcissist in your life. Each week, you will hear stories from survivors who have navigated through toxic relationships, gaslighting, love-bombing, and the process of their healing from these relationships. Listen to Navigating Narcissism on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, Chuck, let's get back to it. Answer. How far do they migrate, Josh?

What's the number? How many miles? Well, if you ask Dr. Andrew Farnsworth, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the metrics are all over the ballpark exclamation point. How Stuff Works talked to Dr. Farnsworth. And by the way, I can't say enough about How Stuff Works, Chuck. So Dr. Farnsworth says that depending on the birds, the species, I never thought about this. They may not really move anywhere as far as like a human would think of it. If they live like on a mountain, they are probably going to stay on the mountain. They just might change altitude, like a few hundred meters this way, a few hundred meters that way. It makes a huge difference depending on the season. And that counts as migration. I love that one.

Sure. They might stay in the same region or the same area. They might stay in the same state. And just, you know, here in Georgia, you could migrate just a little further south in the winter and have some very nice weather. Yeah. There's a pretty big difference between North Georgia and South Georgia weather-wise. Yeah. Big time. Or you could really get on your horse or your wing and your migration may be like truly epic. And I guess we should talk about the most epic is the Arctic, Arctic, that word, the Arctic turn. They go from pole to pole. They go from the Antarctic to the Arctic. And that's the last time I'll have to say that. And that is a round trip of close to 19,000 miles or 30,000 clicks. Can I say clicks? Sure.

Okay. I didn't know if that was bad because it, do you think of Vietnam? I don't know who else called it clicks. That's what I associate it with. But I only heard it in Vietnam war movies. I didn't know if that was a bad thing. Anyway, let's just call it kilometers. And that is the largest or rather the longest migration on planet earth for anything. Yeah. Any animal whatsoever. It's pretty, pretty impressive. I found one called the Bartale Godwit. They hold the record for the longest nonstop flight of any bird. Let's hear it. They fly nonstop over 6,800 miles from Alaska to New Zealand without rest. Wow. Can you imagine? Yeah. That's a real reaction, by the way. We don't,

sometimes we'll surprise each other with facts. Just sometimes we're being coy. Yeah. You thought I was going to bust out something about the black pole war blurs, didn't you? No, no. I know you'd have something new for me. So that was, that was a real reaction everyone. I'm not that good actor. That's true. I appreciate that. You set me up for that one. Come on. Oh, of course I did. So the destination is kind of the last piece, like whether or not they migrate or not, how far they migrate and now like where they're going to go. And this one is really interesting because they don't know for sure and they're trying to answer these questions, but there are a lot of

super cool ideas about it. And one really cool sort of side note to this is some species of bird will go to the same place every single year, just like you're going on a vacation, and they'll have the same rest stops every year, just like you might on a vacation. Yeah. They'll actually learn landmarks to follow. And yeah, that's pretty cool because that means that if you see some Canadian geese in your backyard one year, you're probably going to see them the next year and so on and so forth. Yeah, that's pretty cool. They also think that there's just a number of redundant systems that basically allow birds to navigate. One of them apparently is learning how to navigate by the

stars, by constellations, pretty impressive for a bird. Like people. They also can use the sun to orient themselves, but then they have other, they believe they have other onboard equipment, like an ability to see the earth's electromagnetic field and orient themselves that way. Yeah. And you said see, like some birds may sense it, but they actually think that some birds, there's a theory that some have a special pigment that literally lets them see it. Yeah. Which is wild to think about. I would love to see that. I guarantee in the next 50 to 70 years, we're going to have all sorts of ways to see like UV, to see magnetic fields, just to see all sorts of, just to experience the world in different ways that we aren't even thinking of right now.

Guarantee it's going to be like a huge pastime. Yeah. Or put on those special glasses and someone's clothes are off. The X-ray glasses? Yeah. Good idea. We're going to make a million bucks off of that. Did you ever see the Ricky Gervais show extras? Uh-uh. There's a great bit online that you should look up, just a scene with Patrick Stewart, Sir Patrick Stewart. Okay. Where he's, Ricky Gervais goes in his trailer, and this is a short one so I can tell the story real quick. Ricky Gervais goes in his trailer. He's an extra on movies and TV shows. That's the whole premise of the show. And he seeks some advice. He's like, I'm just an extra and like, you know, I'm trying to write screenplays and make my own way. And Sir Patrick Stewart like really bonds with me. He's

like, yeah, I'm writing my own screenplays as well. And his big idea is that he is like, has super power, is that he can make a woman's clothes just fall right off their body. And Ricky Gervais keeps, keeps it going like, and you know, and then what happens and, you know, and then like trying to get to some further plot point, but Patrick Stewart just keeps saying, and you know, there's a police officer and she comes up and I just look at her and her clothes just come right off and I can see everything. It's hilarious. It's really funny. It's that in the Liam Neeson scene from extras. I'll check it out. Just classic. What's hilarious is that idea is basically the basis of zapped that Scott Bale movie from the

eighties. Sure. Maybe Sir Patrick Stewart wrote that. Maybe he or he's a big fan of it and ripped it off. You never know. I think Chuck, I'm sensing like a bird can sense earth's magnetic field that short stuff is apt. You're correct. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.