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| Question about Pets:My 3 yearold grandson asks.Why do birds not fall from trees or the roof? |
I vaguely remembered this from childhood. Basically when we sleep our muscles relax but when a bird goes to sleep its muscles tighten up and it grips the perch so it doesn't fall off. During day time and awake it can consciously control what it wants to do.I've trawled the net and found : www.enaturalist.org/unit/60 which explains this with some interesting diagrams. In case the link doesn't work, simplified, when sleeping, or resting, the birds crouches down on the perch, the more it sleeps, or rests, the deeper it crouches. This tightens the muscles at the ankle which tightens the claws and it doesn't fall off. The ankle on a bird is the place which we probably describe or think of as the knee, the bit where the feathers on the 'drumstick' end and the shank of the leg starts. This tightening effect obviously acts at any time it starts to bend / tighten its ankle joint.
Edit: Tattoe Ted got the effect right but for the wrong reason, they close NOT because they relax which is what we do but close because the muscles actually tighten, think of it like us bending our arm at our elbow towards our shoulder. Now our elbow is the birds ankle. As the birds joint bends it tightens and the birds claws grip.
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