Why Penguins Cannot Fly

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Penguins are one of the types of birds that are not able to fly, which causes biologists to question why some birds were not able keep their flying ability throughout the process of evolution. Scientists believe that birds cannot be both successful flyers and divers because “flying abilities must weaken as the animals adapt to diving.” Biologist Kyle Elliot at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada, led a team that studied species of diving seabirds that have some ability to fly. They tagged some of these birds with recorders that measured the time, depth, acceleration, and temperature of the dives. They also injected the birds with isotope-tagged water, which helped determine the output of water vapor and carbon dioxide, and that will calculate the energy spent. The results showed that the largest amount of energy is used to fly in species like the cormorants and murres. Scientists also found out that cormorants need more energy to dive than penguins, and the cost of energy to dive in murres was in between penguins and cormorants. Elliot’s team realized that murres’ wings allow the ability to fly but create drag underwater, and their bodies are smaller than penguins, allowing faster cooling. Robert Ricklefs, and ornithologist at the University of Missouri says, “Basically, they have to reduce their wings or grow larger to improve their diving, and both would make flying impossible.” Another ornithologist, Rory Wilson of Swansea University, UK, says that the problem is that “murres and cormorants lose heat in very different ways” and that murres “carry a lot of air in their feathers and emerge from dives dry, while cormorant feathers get soggy;” he also thinks that cormorants are inefficient in the study. James Lovvorn, an ornithologist at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale agrees with Elliot when he says, “It is great to so clearly see that flight is

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