Okay, but what's it like as a bird at the top of the world?

E29. Standing at 11,000 feet, lungs burning, Scott watched birds go about their afternoon in the exact thin air that had nearly taken him out. This week he sits down with Dr. Chris Witt, evolutionary biologist at the University of New Mexico and curator of birds at the Museum of Southwestern Biology, who has spent his career figuring out how birds make a living in the thinnest air on Earth. From the hummingbird blood that rewrites itself to match a mountainside to a five-pound coot that has no business existing, this one is about the birds thriving where our bodies would quit.

In this episode:

Why a single Andean slope can stack dozens of hummingbird species right on top of each other, each locked to its own band of elevation
How the same oxygen-grabbing protein keeps evolving the same way, over and over, in a pattern so predictable it runs in reverse
The record-holders pulling off things up high that sound like they shouldn't be possible

Chris doesn't just tell us about these birds, he shows us, so you may want to watch this one.

All audio, video, and images in this episode are either original to Okay, But... Birds (© Okay Media, LLC) or used under license/permission from the respective rights holders. Bird media from the Macaulay Library is used courtesy of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as follows:

House Finch audio contributed by William R. Fish, ML12932
Giant Coot audio contributed by Steven L. Hilty, ML56377

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(36)

Okay, but what's the deal with Darwin's finches?

E35. Eighteen species of small brown bird on a pile of volcanic rock have taught us more about how evolution actually works than almost anything else on Earth. Not because Darwin figured them out. He ...

13 Elo 36min

Okay, but what's the deal with nests?

E34. Not all birds build one, but for the ones that do, a nest has a single job and a shockingly wide range of ways to get it done. Dr. Vanya Rohwer, Curator of Birds and Mammals at the Cornell Univer...

6 Elo 29min

Okay, but how do birds handle a heatwave?

E33. When the air temperature climbs past a bird's own body temperature, staying cool stops being free and starts to cost them water they may not have. Dr. Blair Wolf, University of New Mexico, has sp...

30 Heinä 26min

Okay, but how does wildfire smoke impact birds?

E32. Wildfire smoke is blanketing more of the map every year, and it turns out a smoky sky changes everything for birds, from how they breathe to whether we can find them at all. Dr. Olivia Sanderfoot...

23 Heinä 31min

Okay, but did birds invent music?

E31. If a bird sings a phrase worthy of Beethoven, is that music, or just biology in a nice outfit? Dr. Hollis Taylor, a violinist, composer, and ornithologist, has spent more than two decades recordi...

16 Heinä 29min

Okay, but is the dawn chorus getting quieter?

E30. That wall of birdsong outside your window at sunrise has a name, a structure, and a surprising amount of drama. This week Scott talks with Dr. Dan Mennill, a professor at the University of Windso...

9 Heinä 34min

Okay, but does easy living make birds dumber?

E28. A bird's brain is the most expensive thing it owns, and evolution doesn't hand one out for free. Dr. Carlos Botero, Associate Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, has spent a decade tr...

25 Kesä 32min