Okay! This just in. (Please refer back to a couple of older posts for some background reading: Jan. 15 & 16 to be precise.) But you don't need that for this.
The Natural History Museum at the Smithsonian has been studying the feathers of the geese that downed the US AIRWAYS plane in the Hudson earlier this year...and you know what they found out? That those geese- those Canada Geese - were not NYC residents. They were passing through the area looking for a place to forage.
They can tell that from the FEATHERS. And from Birdie DNA. Apparently, the population of NYC resident Canada Geese is much higher than the numbers of migratory Canada Geese by 4 to 1. (Everyone wants to live in NYC.) (Even geese.)
And too bad the cliche fits: come to NY get some rather rude treatment (altho that's totally a myth). (Really.) But I wonder if word got back to Canada and fresh flocks of wanderlust Canada Geese decided to stay home. So what if the dollar is nice and low right now, they want to keep their feathers.
And the real "stuff" that revealed resident vs migratory evidence was hydrogen isotopes.
Isotopes! Now what are isotopes exactly? I'll bet you're wondering. I'm wondering. I'm gonna look it up. Hang on. (New browser window currently opening.)
Oh boy. Just read the Wikipedia entry -- I can't make sense of it. I'll try somewhere else...I do now know that the word is from the Greek meaning "Equal Place." Hang on.
Okay try this from answers.com: "One of two or more atoms having the same atomic number but different mass numbers."
Well, that certainly explains it.
Uh...okay! ...why don't we go to the video?...See the link up on the left column.
No comments:
Post a Comment