The Albatross: Mightiest of the Seabirds

hey viewers just wanted to say hi on this beautiful day I just stepped outside my 10 million dollar beachfront property and took these cute videos of seagulls that was a lie I mean I do actually live in this house but these are not your ordinary seabirds this is the Magnificent Albatross One of a Kind master of flight they don't look that amazing you say condescendingly they just look like some normal seagull with like some kind of uh I don't know schnoz extension well I reply you're very very wrong trust me the albatross is incredible it has surpassed the challenges of aerodynamics and biology to become the master of soaring firstly some simple differences to prove my point even more taxonomically Albatross are much further from the other sea Birch than first glance suggests Albatross are divided into four genre which are all part of a greater order of pectoral Birds pro-calaria forms but outside the petrols the closest other relatives to the albatross are penguins so where exactly are seagulls in relation to albatrosses well looking at a tree of all modern Birds here is the albatross and all the way over here are the seagulls so no there really isn't a lot of relation between these two groups of birds at least compared to a majority of the other birds out there also another big difference is size this footage doesn't do the best job but some Albatross are huge this image does a better job illustrating the size contrast it even the smallest albatraoz species such as the Indian yellow nose Albatross are still pretty large weighing 2.5 kilograms and having a wingspan measuring 2 meters across this is comparable in size to the very largest gulls like the great black backed skull meanwhile one of the largest Albatross species is the wandering Albatross with some individuals weighing around 12 kilograms and possessing a wingspan of 3.5 meters the longest wingspan of any living bird so yeah the common seabird and the albatross share as much in common as a biplane and an Airbus I think although maybe those two planes share a lot in common I'm not a planologist the reason for this humongous wingspan is all about supporting the albatross's incredible Lifestyle the albatross ranges over the Southern Hemisphere and the North Pacific Ocean which is if you notice an ocean load of water and not much else Albatross whose diet consists of fish and Squid must scan hundreds of square miles of water ceaselessly at a chance to find a vulnerable prey at the surface this would seem like an incredibly exhausting effort for the bird imagine running a marathon every day just for a chance to get some fish sticks at the end of it but for the ingenious Albatross these flights take as little energy as sitting in a car and driving this is due to their Mastery of a process called Dynamic soaring you see the albatross's long narrow wings are not built for flapping like a normal bird in fact actually suck at flopping their wings being incapable of sustained powered flight how they really fly is much more like gliding using the windy currents over the ocean surface as their greatest Ally here's a good illustration of just how Dynamic soaring works if the wind is coming from this way the albatross travels diagonally upwind it then turns and diagonally travels downward riding downwind to the ocean surface until once more turning to travel upwind in an s-shaped pattern in this way the albatross's flight is effortless save for the turns at the top and bottom of the pattern and can go for hours flying hundreds of kilometers without ever once flapping its wings as well Albatross can also use slope soaring using the wind that rises off of large waves as another means of gliding other seabirds are found using these soaring techniques however none might be as effective as the albatross along with its humongous wingspan another adaptation that makes the albatross such an effective soar is a special tendon in its shoulder this tendon also found in the albatross's close relative the giant petrols acts as a shoulder lock that holds the wings fully extended without any exertion from the muscles kind of like cruise control for the birds with these adaptations some albatrosses can fly nearly a thousand kilometers a day on the open oceans that's the distance between Paris and Vienna or between Chicago and DC now this method of flight puts certain limitations on the bird for one calm winds equal no flying if the winds in albatross's riding suddenly stop then it will land in the water and just kind of sit there in the open ocean it seems like a pretty routine thing but I find it hard to imagine this is not one of the most terrifying situations a seabird can be in I mean if I was a bird completely defenseless flooding hundreds of kilometers away from any land just waiting for the wind to come back I'd have some dark thoughts that's just what I'm saying moreover the range of Albatross species is affected by wind patterns notice that on a map of their range they seem to completely avoid the Equator this is because of the inter-tropical Convergence Zone aka the calms or dog drums which is an area around the equator that experiences calm and mellow wins this Zone effectively stops different Albatross species from living or crossing the Equator say for one Galapagos Island species that ride the unique current around the islands as well this is probably the reason there are no albatrosses in the North Atlantic the only Albatross there are scragglers who somehow got lost at sea and are forever trapped from finding their way home the albatross life isn't just about flying there are other aspects of its ecology to discuss for instance you might be wondering where an animal that spends all of its life above the ocean and only eats saltwater fish gets fresh drinking water well it doesn't an albatross will drink as much salt water as it wants and then extra salt is excreted through Salt glands these glands lie above the eye and will secrete a hyper saline solution that travels out of the animal's nostrils onto the beak okay whatever but how about breeding kind of a weird question to ask out of the blue but I'll answer it Albatross will raise multiple generations of young throughout their lifetime but these young take a long time to raise for bird standards with large species like the wandering Albatross taking a year to do it from laying the egg into a fledgling leaves the nest as well they only ever lay one egg at a time all this to say that reproduction is a huge undertaking that Albatross put a lot of effort into in order to breed mature Albatross travel the nesting colonies usually isolated Islands free from predators The Colony and individual travels to is usually the very same one they were born at males will land first on these islands and set up a nest site and if he's lucky a female will show up and initiate what is known as a display bout a display bout is kind of like the world's most high pressure dance-off where the pair will judge the others move to see if they are suitable for breeding and where everything is legal and Albatross has a Litany of moves to pull from including beak touching mouth gaping staring at the sky head bobbing yammering yapping and others that would get any human thrown off the dance floor but if the other bird matches their Tempo then they might just mate and not just that but mate for life and once they produce their one egg per cycle both Birds take turn incubating the egg for days to weeks at a time until it finally hatches more than two months after it's been laid once it's hatched it will take many more months until the young Albatross is ready to leave the nest but if it does reach maturity the parents efforts will be well spent a fledgling Albatross will finally reach breeding maturity at five years of age once more long for birds and can live for decades after in fact the oldest wild bird in the world is an albatross named wisdom who is now in her 70s indeed the albatross is one of the few birds that just like us will die naturally of old age so that's Albatross is for you some of the most magnificent seabirds in the world masters of flight and courtship long-lived and well-traveled as per usual these beautiful beasts are being pushed to the brink by us humans 15 species are threatened with Extinction one of the main drivers being commercial fishing with many birds dying caught in the bait lines of a fishing boat and drowning but in a world without humans there is probably not a more peaceful life to choose than that of the mighty albatross hello and thank you for watching it's been a while and I've been wanting to make this video for a long time I just love albatrosses that much there are some facts I left out of this video for instance did you know the albatross has to do a run-up to get enough lift to take off kind of like an airliner anyways thanks for the images music and videos I used to make this and of course thank you for watching see ya

Channel: The Budget Museum

Views: 105,822

Keywords: albatross, Albatross, Albatros, Seabird, Seagull, Petrel, Marine Biology, Ornithology, Zoology, Biology, Animal Kingdom, Birds, Birding

Id: rpcBorscK8Q

Length: 9min 19sec (559 seconds)

Published: Fri May 19 2023