Mondo Knows Facts
Wandering albatrosses can fly thousands of miles without flapping
Albatrosses exploit ocean wind shear gradients using dynamic soaring.
With wingspans reaching up to 3.5 metres, wandering albatrosses lock their wing joints in place using a special tendon arrangement. They repeatedly climb into fast upper winds and dive down toward ocean wave troughs, extracting energy from wind gradients to travel vast distances without burning stamina.
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Tags: albatross, birds, flight
Wandering albatrosses can fly thousands of miles without flapping: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- Albatrosses exploit ocean wind shear gradients using dynamic soaring. The figure is taken from Encyclopædia Britannica, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a animals fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Animals shelf, one of 1,090 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
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- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.