The tallest flying bird in the world

The special body structure helps the goose-headed goose fly at an altitude of nearly 8,000 meters to migrate across the Himalayas.

The research, published in September 3 in the eLife journal, describes the experiments of Jessica Meir, astronaut and physiologist, and her colleague Julia York, a graduate student at the University of Texas. They collected 19 striped goose eggs from the Sylvan Heights Bird Park wildlife park in Scotland Neck, North Carolina (12 in 2010 and 7 in 2011).

The researchers sent striped geese to the wind tunnel.(Video: UBC).

Meir and York stayed with the young geese a few weeks after the eggs hatched so that the geese treated them as caregivers. The team then took them to the University of British Columbia. As the geese grew, the researchers investigated how they fly under reduced oxygen conditions in wind tunnels, much like their migratory environments.

Meir et al. Found that striped goose metabolic more slowly under limited oxygen conditions, reducing the amount of oxygen needed to fly. They also devise effective flight strategies, changing biological movement as they fly up and down to conserve oxygen.

The results of the study showed that the blood temperature in the blood vessels of the goose-headed goose decreased when they flew under less oxygen . Hemoglobin, the protein that binds to oxygen in the blood, is very sensitive to temperature. When blood is cold, it can carry more oxygen when the blood is warm. By reducing the temperature of blood vessels near the lungs, striped goose can circulate more oxygen to the chest muscles to help them fly.

Striped goose is the tallest flying bird in the world. Each year, striped goose migrates through the Himalayas from India to the Tibetan Plateau in China and Mongolia. The journey includes a change of altitude over 7,925 meters in 8 - 12 hours. "Stripe goose are the astronauts in the bird world , " York commented.

Each year, striped goose migrates through the Himalayas from India to the Tibetan Plateau in China and Mongolia.

Climbers in the Himalayas must adapt to the environment or use oxygen masks. However, striped goose uses more oxygen. For decades, scientists have known this goose has the ability to bind oxygen to hemoglobin, a process that helps transport large amounts of oxygen to each cell.

In the past, experiments on striped goose were conducted when they were resting or walking on a treadmill. The study results show that striped goose has more capillaries around cells in the chest muscle than oyster geese and other geese do not fly at such high altitude. Their cells are also mitochondrial, organelles use oxygen to provide energy to the cells. In addition, the goose-headed goose also flew along the terrain to take advantage of the oxygen-rich atmosphere above the valley.

Knowing how striped goose survive in anoxic conditions, the researchers could apply it to patients with heart failure or stroke due to sudden loss of oxygen.