According to Breck Tyler, a lecturer at the University of California, Santa Cruz and retired research scientist who studied the Laysan albatross colony on Midway Atoll for decades, there are other Laysan albatrosses just a few years younger than Wisdom, so "she's probably not an outlier." That makes her at least 66 years old, but she's likely older, and she's still going strong - as of 2018 she was still raising chicks, NPR reported (opens in new tab). The oldest wild bird in the world is a Laysan albatross ( Phoebastria immutabilis) named Wisdom, who was tagged in 1956 at the Laysan albatross colony at Midway Atoll in the North Pacific Ocean when she was already a mature adult. (Image credit: Shutterstock) (opens in new tab)Īll albatrosses are very long-lived. Albatrosses are expert fliers and spend so much time in the air that they likely sleep while they glide. "It's an accepted fact because of their movements, they have to sleep."Ī wandering albatross glides gracefully over the ocean. And, based on microchip-tracked movements of albatrosses, "they can for hours on end, and so it is theorized that they do sleep on the wing," Angel said.
A 2016 study published in Nature Communications (opens in new tab) described how a distant cousin of the albatross, the frigatebird, has many, seconds-long periods of sleep while flying, suggesting that sleeping in the air is definitely possible for other long-distance traveling seabirds.
In fact, it's the tiny alpine swift, not the albatross, that holds the record for non-stop distance flying, as reported in a 2013 study published in the journal Nature Communications (opens in new tab).Īs for sleep, Angel said that it's very likely that albatrosses sleep on the wing.
Related: A hot blob in the Pacific Ocean caused 1 million seabirds to die (opens in new tab)Īn albatross can go a year or more without setting foot on land, Angel said, although the birds do touch down in water in order to feed on the squid and fish that make up their diet. The birds also use something called "dynamic soaring," which involves changing the angle of their wings relative to the wind, to maximize the lift generated - a similar technique could help unmanned research aircraft stay aloft for months, the Independent reported (opens in new tab). With near constant wind in their environment, albatrosses are able to "lock their elbow joints and literally just fix their wings and just glide," Angel said. This latitude range is "called the 'roaring 40s' and 'furious 50s' for a reason," said Andrea Angel, the Albatross Task Force manager with Birdlife South Africa, a nonprofit organization dedicated to bird conservation.
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