Bar-tailed godwits are among the endurance athletes among birds. A specimen of the bird species has now set a world record, completing the longest non-stop flight ever recorded.
Guinness World Records reports a new world record. However, no human high-flyer set it up, rather a flyer in the literal sense. A small bird, more precisely a bar-tailed godwit, has achieved great things.
A specimen of this bird species is according to the world record catalogue Flew 13,560 kilometers without stopping for a meal. This is a new world record for the “longest non-stop flight” by a bird.
King of the high flyers
The bar-tailed godwit’s journey began on October 13, 2022 in Alaska and ended eleven days later in the Australian state of Tasmania. The fact that the route and flight behavior of the bird with the identification number 234684 could be evaluated is thanks to a 5G chip attached to it.
With its performance, the five-month-old bar-tailed godwit broke the world record of another representative of its kind by 350 kilometers. That bird, in turn, had broken the record for a third bar-tailed godwit in 2020, having flown 11,500 non-stop flights from A to B 13 years earlier.
Special characteristics of the bar-tailed godwit
The Limosa lapponica, as the bird species is called, is one of the high-flyers, even among the long-distance migrants. This is due to some special characteristics of the bird, which is around 40 centimeters long and weighs up to 360 grams.
Bar-tailed godwits can break down and utilize parts of their own body tissue. The scientific term for this is autophagy. The bird eats itself, so to speak. Like many other migratory birds, it is also able to enlarge its heart, lungs and chest muscles, so that these organs can be supplied with more energy and oxygen.
VIDEO: “Birdie” with a difference: Golfer almost shoots a bird