Pigeons made 10 flights to a novel perch. Kinematic measurements of these flights were obtained from video recordings, and the forces exerted on the perch on each landing were measured. There was wide variation(20-fold range) in the kinetic energy of the pigeons just before landing,arising almost entirely from variation in horizontal velocity. The maximum force exerted on the perch varied in magnitude from approximately twice to eight times the pigeons' body weight, and in direction from 40 to 90 below the horizontal. In landings with high final kinetic energy, the maximum force exerted on the perch was larger and was applied at a shallower angle than in those with low final kinetic energy. Landing flights with high final kinetic energy showed straighter trajectories and a larger peak deceleration during the last 300 ms of approach flight than those with low final kinetic energy, which had downward-curving trajectories and a more prolonged and steady pattern of deceleration. Mean final kinetic energy was lower in the first two landings made on the perch than in subsequent landings, indicating that pigeons are more likely to adopt a slow,downward-curving approach to a novel perch and a fast, straight approach to a familiar one.
In the field: an interview with Martha Muñoz
Martha Muñoz is an Assistant Professor at Yale University, investigating the evolutionary biology of anole lizards and lungless salamanders. In our new Conversation, she talks about her fieldwork in Indonesia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic and the Appalachian Mountains, including a death-defying dash to the top of a mountain through an approaching hurricane.
Call for new preLighters
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preLights is the preprint highlighting community supported by The Company of Biologists. At the heart of preLights are our preLighters: early-career researchers who select and write about interesting new preprints for the research community. We are currently looking for new preLighters to join our team. Find out more and apply here.
Graham Scott in conversation with Big Biology
Graham Scott talks to Big Biology about the oxygen cascade in mice living on mountaintops, extreme environments for such small organisms. In this JEB-sponsored episode, they discuss the concept of symmorphosis and the evolution of the oxygen cascade.
Trap-jaw ants coordinate tendon and exoskeleton for perfect mandible arc
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Trap-jaw ants run the risk of tearing themselves apart when they fire off their mandibles, but Greg Sutton & co have discovered that the ants simultaneously push and pull the mandibles using energy stored in a head tendon and their exoskeleton to drive the jaws in a perfect arc.
Hearing without a tympanic ear
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In their Review, Grace Capshaw, Jakob Christensen-Dalsgaard and Catherine Carr explore the mechanisms of hearing in extant atympanate vertebrates and the implications for the early evolution of tympanate hearing.
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