Falcons are awesome, and not just the Captain/Millennium versions. These intense air predators have some serious skills when it comes to dive-bombing their prey from above; and, in order to find out exactly how falcons do what they do, physicists strapped tiny cameras to their faces. For science!
Physicist Suzanne Amador Kane, who published her research in the Journal of Experimental Biology, explains that the video footage was useful for analyzing falcon hunting strategies. Basically, the birds use a “motion camouflage trick,” where they line up alongside their prey, making them seem motionless while pursuing them.
For the rest of us, watching this video is basically like watching mid-air bird dogfights in real time. Spoiler alert: there is no punching.
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Published: Jan 26, 2014 12:15 pm