At present, many popular science websites like to carry out some of the world's most popular science, such as the world's largest animal is the blue whale, and the world's largest plant is the General Sherman tree. However, the world's largest flying species is rarely mentioned. In the ancient myths and legends of the mainland, the largest bird is "Peng", and it was recorded in "Zhuangzi - Getaway" that "the back of the Peng, I don't know its thousands of miles, flying in anger, its wings are like clouds hanging in the sky". But the legend is just a legend, and no one has really seen it. The largest surviving bird is the Largest Bird of Prey known as the "Modern Roc Bird", the Andean Condor.
There is a word "god" in the name of the Andean condor, so it must have its unusualness, its magic, and its "eagle".
Origin of the Condor
The first magic of the Andean Condor is its massive body. The Andean condor is indeed large enough, the male eagle weighs between 11-15 kg, and the female eagle can also weigh 7.5-11 kg, with a length of about 117-135 cm.
At the same time, its most amazing thing is its amazing wingspan, although it does not have the exaggeration of the sun when the Roc takes off, but the wingspan of 2.7-3.1 meters is also enough to be amazing.
The second magic of the Andean Condor is its longevity. It is the world's longest-lived bird, the average lifespan of many birds is only about 5 or 6 years, such as the most familiar and common sparrows around us, for example, the average lifespan of sparrows is about 5-10 years, but the age of the Andean condor can reach 50 years old, and the Andean condor will reach sexual maturity at the age of 5 or 6 years old, and can achieve lifelong mating.
Its performance during courtship is also more surprising, during courtship, the color of its neck will change from dark yellow to bright yellow, its mouth will hiss, spread its wings and swing its tongue to attract the attention of the opposite sex. Female condors will nest on rock walls of 3000-5000 meters, lay eggs between February and March of each year, laying 1-2 eggs at a time, and once the eggs or chicks are missing, they will lay another egg to increase their reproduction rate.
The most amazing thing about the Andean Condor is that it has become a symbol in people's hearts, incarnated into spiritual beliefs. Because of its tall and mighty size, the Andean condor was considered by the ancient Andeans to be a representative of immortality, the embodiment of the god of the sky. The ancient Andeans even regarded it as the "soul of The Andean civilization", and they also used the Andean condor as a totem, hanging among the tribes, hoping that the Andean condor would protect them and bring them good luck.
Now, many South American countries, including Bolivia, Chile, Colombia and Ecuador, have incorporated the Andean Condor into their flags and coats of arms, which shows the importance of the Andean Condor in their hearts.
Condor is not God
Although the Andean Condor says that there are so many magical places, most of these magical places come from the shaping of nature and the admiration of human beings.
In fact, the Andean condor is just one of the thousands of creatures created by nature, and it also follows the laws of nature, and also has a variety of habits, food that loves to eat, and reproductive characteristics... So let's take a systematic and comprehensive look at this Andean condor.
The Andean Condor is a New World vulture in South America. Its name has been used since Carl Linnaeus was named in 1758, but there is still some controversy about the classification of its name due to the lack of corresponding fossil evidence, but these controversies can not question its magic.
It is mainly distributed near the Andes, north to Venezuela and Colombia, south to Ecuador, Peru and Chile, through Bolivia and Argentina to the western part of the Tierra del Fuego Islands, inhabiting vast grasslands and mountains above 5,000 meters above sea level.
The andean condor has dark hair all over its body. The whole body hair is mainly black, and the neck is usually surrounded by white feathers, and there are white markings on the wings, but they do not appear until after the first moulting.
In fact, the Andean condor also has an "embarrassing" point, that is, baldness, head and neck only a small number of feathers, the benefits of baldness can make it better keep the head and neck clean, head and neck skin color will change with changes in mood. The male eagle has a dark red flesh crown, and the female eagle's flesh crown is gray-brown, which can be used as a corresponding communication tool.
The condor "descended" into the human world, in fact, there is not much magic, and even in order to live, it needs to suffer all kinds of hardships. Although the Andean condor is large, its courage is indeed not large, and its predatory ability is not very strong, and it often has to be "hungry".
The Predatory Andean Condor is weaker than the "constant" eagle, and according to our previous impression of the eagle, it hovers in the sky and locks on to the prey, swooping at super fast speed, and the sharp and sharp claws directly grab the prey. However, the real predatory ability of the Andean condor is very different from that of the eagle, and the predation ability is "weak and explosive". The Middle Toe of the Andean Condor is very long, but its hind toe is not fully developed, the claws on all the toes are not curved and relatively blunt, it is difficult to insert the claws into the body of the prey for hunting, its feet are very suitable for walking, but it is difficult to use as a hunting tool.
Therefore, the Andean condor could hardly prey on live prey, and could only feed on carrion. It can only search the grasslands every day for decaying corpses, especially the corpses of cattle and sheep. After the body is found, it will eat a full meal, eat all the carrion before leaving, the sharper beak and strong digestive system, providing it with the possibility of digesting food as quickly as possible.
Moreover, in stark contrast to its massive body, it has a "cowardly" personality. The Andean Condor's massive body, which is close to 3 meters when flying in the sky, belongs to the top of the entire flying animal, but its courage and its body are in stark contrast. In 2021, a young man in Chile filmed a very interesting video, an Andean condor accidentally landed outside the window of his house, two eyes looked directly at the family dog, the dog may not have seen such a huge eagle, suddenly began to bark wildly, and the Andean condor immediately flapped its wings in fright, and flew away.
So, what does the Andean Condor look like when it flies? What's so different about the usual "eagle"?
Fly for five hours without waving your wings
The Andean Condor has a huge body, so how does it fly hundreds of kilometers at a time? These questions have plagued generations of scientists, and it wasn't until recently that scientists used instruments to uncover the mystery.
Emily Shepard, a professor from Swansea University in the United Kingdom, spent five years studying the flight of the Andean Condor. He fixed the flight recorder to the body of the Andean Condor to obtain various flight data of the Andean Condor. The setting of the recorder also adopts the most effective manual collection method, the researchers will be the recorder through a small wire bundled to the condor, as long as the Andean condor flap its wings to fly when the recorder will automatically open the recording data, once the condor rests, the small wire will automatically fuse, the flight recorder will also fall down on its own.
After unremitting efforts, Professor Emily finally obtained a large amount of data, which was collated and analyzed later. He found that the Andean condor flew an average of about 3 hours a day, flapping its wings every two minutes, and the time to wave its wings was only 1% of the total flight time.
The most extreme example is that a recorder recorded data shows that an Andean condor flew a full 180 kilometers in a 5-hour flight time, and it did not wave its wings once, which is simply unbelievable.
Therefore, the mystery in people's hearts was finally revealed, and it turned out that the Andean condor was not flying at all, but was gliding. It is a true "master of aerodynamics", which explains how the Andean condor flew uninterruptedly with a 3-meter wingspan of about 10 kilograms. The Andean condor only wavees its wings a few times during take-off, and after successful take-off, it will fully borrow the air current in the sky, perfectly use the updraft of the updraft, and achieve the "feat" of soaring thousands of miles without flapping its wings.
Through the study of the flight mechanism of the Andean condor, it also provides a reference for scientists to improve and optimize the shape and material of related aircraft in the future, and invents and creates a better and more optimized bionic machine, which may be the Andean condor has given its magical gift to mankind and promoted the progress of human civilization.
The unveiling of this puzzle makes people realize the true magic of the Andean condor, which has not only given it a huge body and wingspan, but also taught it how to fly with the help of air currents, which may not be the magic of the Andean condor, but the magic of nature. Whether the Andean Condor God is magical or not, what is important is that humans and TheDian Condors live on the earth in this great court, and we must protect and protect the Condor and achieve harmonious coexistence with it.
Author: Ya Ya Editor: Xiao Wan