{"id":88,"date":"2009-07-31T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-31T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/scienceandthesacred\/2009\/07\/breathing-at-30000-feet.html"},"modified":"2014-05-19T09:16:15","modified_gmt":"2014-05-19T13:16:15","slug":"breathing-at-30000-feet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/scienceandthesacred\/2009\/07\/breathing-at-30000-feet.html","title":{"rendered":"Breathing at 30,000 Feet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Bar-headed_Geese-_Bharatpur.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/202\/import\/Bar-headed_Geese-_Bharatpur.jpg\" class=\"mt-image-center\" style=\"margin: 0pt auto 20px;text-align: center\" width=\"504\" height=\"378\" \/><\/span> <\/p>\n<div>Migration can often be a long and difficult journey for animals.&nbsp; For the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/08\/04\/science\/04obgoose.html?ref=science\">bar-headed goose<\/a>, migration often entails flights over the highest mountains in the world: the Himalayas. Bar-headed geese have been observed flying at altitudes as high as 30,000 feet.&nbsp; At such a height, the thin air contains only a quarter of the oxygen as air at sea level.&nbsp; Complicating the feat is the fact that while in flight, geese consume as much as 20 times more oxygen than normal.<\/p>\n<p>So how can these birds still support the exertion of flying in such a low-oxygen setting?&nbsp; Graham R. Scott, a doctoral student at the University of British Columbia, and his colleagues have found that they the answer may lie in the bird&#8217;s muscles.&nbsp; Scott and his colleagues compared the pectoral muscles of the bar-headed goose with several related species.&nbsp; They found that the muscles were identical in all but two aspects: a greater number of capillaries around the cells and a greater number of mitochondria near the cell membrane in each cell.&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>Thanks to these two adaptations, the oxygen absorbed by bar-headed geese does not need to diffuse as far to produce energy.&nbsp; Scott and his colleagues theorize that bar-headed geese slowly evolved these unique features alongside the rise of Himalayas, which are one of the youngest mountain chains on Earth.<\/div>\n<p><!-- AddThis Button BEGIN -->\n<\/p>\n<div class=\"addthis_toolbox addthis_default_style\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.addthis.com\/bookmark.php?v=250&amp;pub=biologos\" class=\"addthis_button_compact\">Share<\/a><br \/>\n<span class=\"addthis_separator\">|<\/span><br \/>\n<a href=\"editor-content.html?cs=utf-8\" class=\"addthis_button_facebook\"><\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"editor-content.html?cs=utf-8\" class=\"addthis_button_myspace\"><\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"editor-content.html?cs=utf-8\" class=\"addthis_button_google\"><\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"editor-content.html?cs=utf-8\" class=\"addthis_button_twitter\"><\/a>\n<\/div>\n<p><!-- AddThis Button END --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Migration can often be a long and difficult journey for animals.&nbsp; For the bar-headed goose, migration often entails flights over the highest mountains in the world: the Himalayas. Bar-headed geese have been observed flying at altitudes as high as 30,000 feet.&nbsp; At such a height, the thin air contains only a quarter of the oxygen&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":196,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-thoughts"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Breathing at 30,000 Feet - Science and the Sacred<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/scienceandthesacred\/2009\/07\/breathing-at-30000-feet.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Breathing at 30,000 Feet - Science and the Sacred\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Migration can often be a long and difficult journey for animals.&nbsp; For the bar-headed goose, migration often entails flights over the highest mountains in the world: the Himalayas. Bar-headed geese have been observed flying at altitudes as high as 30,000 feet.&nbsp; At such a height, the thin air contains only a quarter of the oxygen&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/scienceandthesacred\/2009\/07\/breathing-at-30000-feet.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Science and the Sacred\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-07-31T08:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-05-19T13:16:15+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/scienceandthesacred\/files\/import\/Bar-headed_Geese-_Bharatpur.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"The BioLogos Foundation\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Breathing at 30,000 Feet - Science and the Sacred","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/scienceandthesacred\/2009\/07\/breathing-at-30000-feet.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Breathing at 30,000 Feet - Science and the Sacred","og_description":"Migration can often be a long and difficult journey for animals.&nbsp; For the bar-headed goose, migration often entails flights over the highest mountains in the world: the Himalayas. Bar-headed geese have been observed flying at altitudes as high as 30,000 feet.&nbsp; At such a height, the thin air contains only a quarter of the oxygen&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/scienceandthesacred\/2009\/07\/breathing-at-30000-feet.html","og_site_name":"Science and the Sacred","article_published_time":"2009-07-31T08:00:00+00:00","article_modified_time":"2014-05-19T13:16:15+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/scienceandthesacred\/files\/import\/Bar-headed_Geese-_Bharatpur.jpg"}],"author":"The BioLogos Foundation","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/scienceandthesacred\/2009\/07\/breathing-at-30000-feet.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/scienceandthesacred\/2009\/07\/breathing-at-30000-feet.html","name":"Breathing at 30,000 Feet - Science and the 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