Seabirds may find food at sea by flying in a massive, kilometers-wide arc
Food is scattered thinly in the open ocean, and seabirds often need to search far and wide to find sustenance. Now, researchers think they’ve found a new cooperative strategy among the birds, one that may help them survive on the high seas. Multiple groups of flying seabirds can arrange themselves into massive line formations that “rake” over the ocean’s surface, possibly to more efficiently search for food. Far from land, the ocean can be unforgiving, but seabirds have a remarkable suite of adaptations for finding food in this blue desert. For example, seabirds can work together when foraging on a chance school of fish, boosting catch rates by synchronizing their diving. But the shape and scale of the cooperative “rake” formations — with multiple bird groups stretching kilometers across the sky — have never before been scientifically observed in seabirds, researchers report March 23 in the Journal of Avian Biology.“To our knowledge, no such flight pattern … had ever been observed and described,” says Camille Assali, an...