>Re: Mark Chappell's comments, it and previous comments raise a few
>questions for me -
>
>Birds during migration can cover 4,000 (or perhaps even more) kilometres -
>what mammal/s could do that? I know marathon runners can keep going for
>several days so maybe it's just a question of keeping fit. Which birds
>have to do all the time otherwise they are dead.
*** In my last diatribe I forgot to mention that the longest mammal
migration I know of is that of the gray whale, which goes between Mexico
and the Arctic Ocean near Alaska (many thousands of kilometers). But this
isn't really comparable to nonstop bird migration, since the whales make
the journey in months and are able to stop, rest, and eat on the way. The
movements of many southern hemisphere whale species between Antarctic
waters and temperate/tropical oceans are comparable, and it's recently been
discovered that male northern elephant seals make a trip similar to that of
gray whales, but they do the entire trip twice each year (!).
-- Mark C
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Mark Chappell, Biology Department, UC Riverside
until Aug '99: C/O Dr. Bill Buttemer
Dept. Biological Sciences, University of Wollongong
Wollongong NSW 2522 AUSTRALIA
email:
web: http://cnas.ucr.edu/~bio/faculty/Chappell.html
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