Bird Flies 8,425 Miles from Alaska to Tasmania Non-Stop!

[Yazata]

[Image: HC5111XXUAA0Ee6?format=jpg&name=small]

A migratory bird just shattered world records — flying 8,425 miles (13,560 km) NON-STOP across the Pacific without landing once.

The bar-tailed godwit doesn’t stop to eat, drink, or sleep during its migration across the Pacific Ocean. Its journey from Alaska to Australia takes roughly 11 days of continuous flight, covering over 13,000 kilometers through storms, headwinds, and open ocean with zero land beneath it the entire time.

Before departure, it does something almost surgical to its own body. It shrinks its digestive organs down to almost nothing, converting the stomach, intestines, and liver into raw fuel. The bird essentially eats its own gut to make room for fat reserves that will power its wings for nearly two weeks straight.

The brain doesn’t fully sleep either. Half of it stays active while the other half rests, alternating in shifts mid-flight at altitude over the open Pacific. The godwit is simultaneously unconscious and navigating with magnetic field sensitivity that no human instrument in the 18th century could replicate.

What makes this genuinely staggering beyond the physical record is the navigational precision involved. The bird leaves Alaska and arrives in New Zealand with accuracy that would embarrass early GPS systems. It reads Earth’s magnetic field, atmospheric pressure gradients, star positions, and potentially quantum-level compass mechanisms inside its eye that literally let it see magnetic field lines overlaid on its visual field.

Evolution spent millions of years building an aerospace navigation system inside a 300 gram animal.

[C C]

And B6 was a juvenile godwit, no less.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar-tailed..._migration

EXCERPT: One specific female of the flock, flagged 'E7', flew onward from China to Alaska and stayed there for the breeding season. Then in August 2007 she departed on an eight-day non-stop flight from western Alaska to the Piako River near Thames, New Zealand, setting a new known flight record of 11,680 km (7,258 mi). This L. l. baueri female made a 174-day round-trip journey of 29,280 km (18,194 mi) with 20 days of flying.

In 2021, a male bar-tailed godwit, 4BBRW, set a new record for non-stop migratory flight with an 8,100 mile (approximately 13035 km) flight from Alaska, USA to New South Wales, Australia. The same individual held a previous record in 2020.

In 2022, a juvenile godwit flagged 'B6' left Alaska on 13 October and flew non-stop to Tasmania, the first time a tagged bird has flown this route. It flew a minimum of 13,560 km (8,430 mi) in 11 days 1 hour, a record non-stop distance.

[Zinjanthropos]

The brain doesn’t fully sleep either. Half of it stays active while the other half rests, alternating in shifts mid-flight at altitude over the open Pacific. The godwit is simultaneously unconscious and navigating with magnetic field sensitivity that no human instrument in the 18th century could replicate.

Autopilot?

Are these solo flights or do they fly as a flock?

[confused2]

Key Migration Facts:
Mass Departure: They gather in thousands at staging areas before embarking on their journey.
Flock Behavior: They fly in coordinated groups, often seen as flocks in the sky.
Record Flights: These flocks fly non-stop from Alaska to New Zealand or Australia, lasting 8–11 days.
Separation: Adults and juveniles may migrate separately, with adults leaving weeks earlier.

The juveniles don't fly with the adults .. this gets worse and worse.. how can the juveniles possibly know where they're going?

Looking at the paths they take-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar-tailed...ration.jpg
they don't seem to be flying on a bearing and/or detecting latitude from the magnetic field .. it's like they're using GPS to head for the destination .. not possible and yet they do it..??

[Zinjanthropos]

Is there any studies that have looked at whether birds follow wind or wave patterns, follow migrating whales or other animals/ birds, occasional landmarks or possibly evolving to follow man made craft?

[confused2]

Is there any studies that have looked at whether birds follow wind or wave patterns, follow migrating whales or other animals/ birds, occasional landmarks or possibly evolving to follow man made craft?

They're flying at about 30mph .. so faster than anything they might follow (?).
A thought is that they might have started going to Australia before it split from Gondwana (85 myo ish) and followed it as it moved out into the Southern Ocean.

Similar but less extreme is the way bar* headed geese (one possibility) is that the Himalayas sprang up in the middle of their migration route and it was easier to evolve to fly over them than work out a new route or change feeding grounds.

* I guess bars (heads or tails) are an award for exceptional persistence.