hey did you know how big an albatross was because I
VERY
fucking
did not
i’m so glad people are learning this.
I… I knew in numerical values how big they were, but I’ve never seen them next to humans before
A LORGE BIRB
I thought albatross was another word for “seagull” not for “terror of the fucking sky”
The reason albatross are so huge is because they need huge wings for their unique lifestyle.
Albatross can go months, if not over a year without seeing land. There is a pocket of air trapped between wave fronts and they just ride ontop of it. To make that work, they need huge wings. If the winds die they rest on the surface, and wait for the winds to return; the huge wings mean it’s not worth it to fly any other way. When they need to eat they pluck fish and squid from the surface, and sometimes dive. Nobody is entirely sure if they sleep on the wing, and if so, how.
The large wings also mean that taking off and landing are the hardest parts of flying for an albatross. Generally they avoid it, but for nesting and resting, it’s unavoidable.
Albatross have complex mating dances, and selecting a mate can take years; as they narrow down partners they create their own dancing language that they invent themselves. Once half of a pair has died, that dance is lost. These couples do not travel together once their chick has grown (and it is always a single chick at a time). Instead they will separate to travel the world, not seeing each other again until it is time to return to the island they themselves hatched from, as have hundreds of generations before them. Wanderers, who always find their way home.
I was so not emotionally prepared for reading this thanks
