Pigeons In Space
Why Worldbuilding Stack Exchange recommends it
Worldbuilding Stack Exchange users link it as real evidence of how birds behave in zero gravity when designing flighted species, space habitats and spaceships.
Recommended by 0 people across 0 different months, 2015 to 2022.
What it is
A 43-second clip of pigeons flying in weightlessness, apparently filmed during a parabolic flight, reposted by the AIRBOYD aviation channel from a bioastronautics research video. It shows the birds flailing and tumbling in zero gravity, then replays the footage.
Cited in 1 Wikipedia article, including Reduced-gravity aircraft.
What people said
Cites Mauro Moreno · 2015-10 · Worldbuilding Stack Exchange · on “What are some major architectural designs that would be in spaceships for flighted beings?”
[this video] I think, for what I can see on the video, that I would try to optimise every inch of the ship internally so the air can run freely, so every beating of the wings would return to the wings and allow me to move faster. The video is showing a group of birds flying on zero gravity. They fly on whatever position they are but they are wasting a lot of energy on every beating of the wings.
Cites Chairman Yang · 2018-11 · Worldbuilding Stack Exchange · on “Avian adaptation to microgravity and low gravity environments”
I like to hear the sound of birds when I travel amongst my orbital and planetary habitats scattered around the outer system. Most of these settlements are very densely populated - what you might call arcologies in your time - and this generates heat which renders most of them tropical and subtropical climes for the sake of energy efficiency. The pleasant melodies of creatures like scarlet-backed flowerpeckers [LINK] and bulbul [LINK] birds, you know the kind of thing, would be perfect for such an environment. But you may have seen the feeds [this video] , birds - like most animals - don't enjoy microgravity too much. What kind of changes might we expect to see bird species undergo in order to liv
Cites user69935 · 2020-02 · Worldbuilding Stack Exchange · on “How would a bird's flight change entering the zero gravity axis of an O'neil cylinder?”
This question on space stack begins to tackle how a bird could fly inside an O'Neill cylinder, [LINK] . Here is the video mentioned in the question of birds attempting to fly in zero G [this video] The video shows that they can fly in zero gravity, although they seem quite disorientated. As the above answer points out the birds should fly as normal from take off from the ground where artificial gravity from the spin of the cylinder will take affect like gravity on earth, flying with or against the spin will have interesting effects causing the bird to either dive or hover, but it is the bird flying directly through the zero gravity central axis or along the axis that I am interested in for this q