The Book of Records confirmed this voyage of a small bird between Alaska and Tasmania in fifty days.
A journey of 13,560 km in 11 days and 11 nights, averaging 50 km/h, without eating or drinking. And above all without being asked. This is the incredible world record, confirmed by the very official Guinness World Records, which was beaten by a bird last October.
Equipped with a GPS radio beacon, as examined by scientists under the registration number “234684”, this young, then five-month-old godwit took off from Alaska on October 13, 2022 on its migratory flight. This species usually migrates to New Zealand, but the bird eventually ended up in Ansons Bay, Australia.
A “unihemispheric” sleep
“All black-tailed godwits make long migrations, but those from Alaska make extraordinary flights,” Maxime Zucca, an ornithologist and author of Bird Migration: Understanding Sky Travelers, told Franceinfo. If such a long flight is possible, says the expert, it is because “like other birds or dolphins, it has entered a unihemispheric sleep.” More specifically, this type of sleep only affects one half of the brain, allowing the other to keep flapping its wings.
New direct flight record without setting foot for a GPS tracked Alaskan snipe: 13560 km to Tasmania last October! That’s an average of 50 km/h in a row in 11 days and 11 nights (and 1 hour) without eating or drinking! pic.twitter.com/Ev4ksfLCbL
— Maxime Zucca (@MaximeZucca) January 25, 2023
According to the experts interviewed by Guinness, these birds also have the particularity of changing their body and metabolism during such a journey. In this case, for this bird species, increase the size of their heart and chest muscles to provide more energy and oxygen to these areas.
London New York x 2.5
Guinness has also calculated that this Alaska-Tasmania flight is “equivalent to two and a half journeys between London and New York, or about a third of the entire circumference of the planet.” A well deserved achievement as “234684” has been included in the prestigious Book of Records. It beat the previous record by 500 km set by… another red barge.