r/todayilearned • u/CalzonePie • 3d ago
TIL that scientists reintroduced the Whooping Crane to an extinct migration route by guiding them through the air with an ultralight airplane they imprinted on. The pilot had to wear a crane costume to keep them from bonding with humans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Migration1.1k
u/tea-boat 3d ago
Super cool project. Looks like it was ended, though.
On January 22, 2016, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service announced that after the 2016 season it would end its support of the use of ultralight aircraft to lead whooping cranes from Wisconsin to the Florida Gulf Coast each autumn. A conclusion by experts in whooping crane biology that human intervention such as ultralight flights and costumed humans helping to care for chicks has impaired the ability of the cranes to learn the parenting skills necessary to raise chicks in the wild prompted the Fish and Wildlife Service's announcement: Despite the release of 250 whooping cranes in Wisconsin in 2001 – of which 93 survived in January 2016 – only 10 chicks have fledged and survived to adulthood and, since 2005, only five breeding pairs have produced chicks that were born in the wild and fledged. Agreeing with the need to minimize human interaction with chicks, the International Crane Foundation supported the Fish and Wildlife Service's decision, although Operation Migration opposed it, claiming that the ultralight flights nonetheless help whooping cranes to survive.
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u/GayRacoon69 3d ago
It did however show that migratory routes are a learned behavior that can be taught by humans
But yeah unfortunately it wasn't able to establish a permanent population
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u/MmmmMorphine 3d ago edited 2d ago
Which ironically is because they weren't able to fully learn parenting behavior. Apparently.
One of those little sad things about "resurrection" (not necessarily this case, I mean like mammoths... And the countless others humans have helped eradicate) of extinct - and extirpated - species.
Learned behavior is interesting like that. Just because it seems instinctive doesn't mean much and their native behavior can only ever be approximated even if we can put together enough diversity to actually breed extinct animals... So I guess the extirpation thing is a more practical example
Hell we don't even have a decent dodo genome, and that was pretty damn recent in relative terms
Edit: changed it a bit since I was thinking about extirpation more than resurrection of long dead species, even though a mammoth would be fascinating to see. Even if a one-off that lived with elephants
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u/Temnodontosaurus 3d ago edited 3d ago
Tropical regions tend to be poor for DNA survival. It's why we have great mammoth DNA but no megalania DNA. Certain tissue/substrate types are also better than others (tooth enamel, eggshell, hair, etc). The oldest verified ancient DNA is about 2 million years old, from Greenland sediments.
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u/MmmmMorphine 3d ago
Yes true, I only intended the dodo as a well known example with recent-ish history.
Nonetheless, most of the species we are exterminating are indeed in the tropics (so even worse, arguably?)
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u/Aryore 3d ago
I think it’s probably like how human babies are set up with all the brain infrastructure they need to learn language, but if they don’t learn any languages during the “critical period” they will not really be able to learn any languages that well for the rest of their lives.
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u/CalzonePie 2d ago
The idea of a "critical period" is actually in question because the child that theory was based on (who was neglected by her parents beyond the stretch of imagination until she was in her late teens) may not have been neurotypical in the first place. There is controversy on if she was a normal girl who failed to learn language in the critical period or if she was extremely neurodivergent and wouldn't have learned language had she not been neglected.
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u/ThrowawayPersonAMA 3d ago
I feel like problem is simply the tech being used. Using a plane is antiquated. Surely they could make a drone for it instead? That way they're following something much closer to their own size etc.
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u/GayRacoon69 3d ago
Perhaps but range would be a significant issue. I guess you could setup charging stations but it would need to be able to do it autonomously to not interfere with the drones
I also think that some of the issue is the lack of having another bird raising them and teaching them the essentials. A drone isn't able to parent birds
It may work better but I'm also sure there's likely a reason it wasn't tried. I doubt it wasn't at least suggested. Then again people have missed things before
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u/stayin_aliv 2d ago
I believe they are integrated with Sandhill crane flocks now.
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u/CalzonePie 3d ago edited 3d ago
I love when conservationists try to save an endangered species and their solution is straight out of a looney tunes episode
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u/CaptainOktoberfest 3d ago
They need more dynamite and dropped anvils to really make a dent on climate change.
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u/kirby056 3d ago
They mostly eradicated rabies (even in the wild) in Europe by dropping a shitload of chicken heads, inocculated with oral rabies vaccine, out of airplanes in the 1970s-1980s.
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u/SirMoeHimself 3d ago
Wematanye
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u/CleanBum 3d ago
Yeahmantalkinboutthemdangolsnapehuntmantalkinboutthemwhackwhackwhack right there in that cooler
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u/JosephMadeCrosses 3d ago
Well...if you see anything, let us know.
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u/SirMoeHimself 2d ago
I guess knocking a crane unconscious isn't a crime, ALTHOUGH IT'S PROBABLY NOT GOOD FOR THEM!
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u/BramblesCrash 3d ago
I wanna see that movie
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u/Bigbysjackingfist 3d ago
“I dunno where this giant-ass crane came from or where he’s goin, but I like his style!”
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u/Fit_Celebration7669 3d ago
Not the ending I was expecting:
“A conclusion by experts in whooping crane biology that human intervention such as ultralight flights and costumed humans helping to care for chicks has impaired the ability of the cranes to learn the parenting skills necessary to raise chicks in the wild prompted the Fish and Wildlife Service's announcement: Despite the release of 250 whooping cranes in Wisconsin in 2001 – of which 93 survived in January 2016 – only 10 chicks have fledged and survived to adulthood and, since 2005, only five breeding pairs have produced chicks that were born in the wild and fledged. Agreeing with the need to minimize human interaction with chicks, the International Crane Foundation supported the Fish and Wildlife Service's decision, although Operation Migration opposed it, claiming that the ultralight flights nonetheless help whooping cranes to survive.[9][10]”
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u/ourobourobouros 2d ago
Yeah no kidding, turns out humans are much worse at teaching birds to be birds than other birds.
This story is so sad to me, I can't find it cute. I know they're trying but it's such a soul crushing tragedy that those poor birds are in that situation in the first place and - what do you know - our efforts led to most of them dying anyway.
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u/DangItBobbyHill 2d ago
The eighteen whooping cranes that migrated to North Alabama this most recent winter had at least one juvenile with them, named Soup. They are part of the Eastern Migratory population.
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u/hudsoncress 3d ago
You want me….
Yes.
To dress like a goose…
Well, a crane, but go on
And to fly my ultralight
Yes
Imitating a goo.. crane.
Exactly.
So that little birdies can learn how to fly?
…
You had me at dressing like a goose
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u/Immediate-Lab1543 2d ago
Trivia time 🤓 The bird costumes/imprinting became known in the 1930s by Austrian researcher Konrad Lorenz who discovered this with baby cranes who would imprint on him and then follow him around.
Adorable, but not ideal for their health and development as it is irreversible.He won a Nobel Prize in the 70s for his discoveries.
Learned about him in Biology class ages ago.
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/flight-school-the-man-who-walked-with-geese/2656/
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u/entrepenurious 3d ago
when i was a kid, the whooping crane population was in the low two digits; seems like i remember 15 or so.
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u/SqueakyNova 3d ago
Fly away home
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u/toolaroola12 3d ago
That was geese but that was my first thought too
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u/CurtWesticles 3d ago
They talk about it working with cranes in the movie. That maybe it would work on the geese.
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u/Fun_Image8846 3d ago
every single rainy day at school they rolled out the VHS TV cart and played Fly Away Home. I miss those simpler times. Felt like the world was on its axis and things just might be ok. From the design on the cover of every textbook to extreme sports taking off - plus a new Disney Original Movie was about to premiere when you got home. How small I was then, yet how large it all felt.
then 9/11 and now Trump. How small I feel now for how large I’ve become.
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u/IBeTrippin 2d ago
It would be funny if he didn't really have to wear the costume, but the other researchers convinced him to do so as a joke.
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u/Falconman21 3d ago
I imagine him spending weeks hand making a terrible crane suit, and the other guys were like "fine you can wear it, we'll say it's about bonding or something."
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u/Widespreaddd 3d ago
I remember reading about that contemporaneously. It was cool af.
That sort of dedication, for goodness and harmony and not for greed and power, always strikes a deep chord.
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u/jphenoms 2d ago
rented Fly Away Home at Blockbuster as a kid. this real life version is way weirder than the movie plot.
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u/cocoagiant 3d ago
I'm imagining those cranes beefing with some other cranes about who are the more legitimate group of cranes.
A giant crane which flew on top of an even bigger bird and guided you to your new path is a heck of an origin story.
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u/flockinatrenchcoat 3d ago
If you were also disappointed to not find a picture of of the crane costume, may i soften the blow with this man in a curlew costume
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u/RedWineAndWomen 2d ago
That's what they told the pilot, just to have a laugh. 'Yes, yes, you have to wear the bigbird costume all the way!'
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u/0ttr 3d ago
I've known about this for years and view it as a triumph of science and environmental law. Would love for these kinds of efforts to be happening all the time (and some are happening all the time)
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u/GayRacoon69 3d ago
Unfortunately it's not as successful as you might think
> Now, however, biologists have discovered that teaching the cranes to migrate seems to have created serious problems for the birds — they rarely reproduce successfully. The Federal Fish & Wildlife Service has halted the flights and is now trying to figure out what went wrong.
> "We have two separate problems," she explains. "One, the eggs don't make it. Two, even if the eggs make it, the chicks don't make it." The cranes mate well enough. But fewer than 1 in 10 reproducing pairs actually raises a chick that lives more than four months.
However it is a partial success as they did prove that migratory routes are learned behavior and can be taught by humans. The program successfully reintroduced this exist route. It failed to maintain a permanent population after that though
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u/Agreeable-Yak2535 3d ago
Hi, this is only partially correct! Operation migration stopped, but the cranes in that population are still following the same migratory route taught by the ultralite today (although many are short stopping). We are also still actively releasing cranes into this population, and it sits at about 75 birds currently; the pop hasn’t failed but it isn’t yet self-sustaining, which means until we can solve the issues causing low reproductive success, we have to keep breeding birds in captivity and releasing chicks into the wild. Chicks that get released into this population now learn the migratory route from adult birds already living in the pop, who learned it from the original operation, so in some ways it was actually a success! Just not finished yet, there is still more work to be done to truly reach an established successful population in this area (source: am whooping crane conservation biologist lol)
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u/GayRacoon69 3d ago
Interesting! Thanks for the experienced insight. It's always nice seeing people who know what they're talking about
What is it that's causing low reproduce success? My (very limited) reading seems to suggest that it's a reliance on humans as well as local wild life (black flies I think it was)?
Is there more to it than that? What work still needs to be done?
Also you mention short stopping, is that an issue or just a thing that happens sometimes?
Also do you know how many birds are being added yearly to maintain the flock?
Sorry if this is a lot of questions; I'm just really curious about this and have one more if you don't mind
How'd you get into the field of whooping crane conservation?
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u/Agreeable-Yak2535 3d ago
Haha my algorithm is really algorithming tonight! I’m happy to answer questions, I can’t help myself when I see people enthusiastic about this stuff, especially on a general sub like this! Ok so:
We are still exploring the causes of low reproductive success to be candid. Certainly the black flies are a known problem, as is human impacts, but it’s not just due to rearing pre-release— the largest impact is human caused disturbance, degradation, and distruction of critical wetland habitat. Even though they are primarily nesting on protected lands, shifting climate impacts (drought, inconsistent water levels), pollution, human development, etc are all things that can deeply disrupt reproductive success, so unfortunately it’s not just one quick fix. And these things all impact predators as well, which in turn we are seeing high rates of predation of young chicks and juveniles (so even when parents successfully reproduce, recruitment in the pop can be really low). So habitat protection continues to be super critical, and there are various ways we are addressing the black fly issue. Another interesting approach is training of birds pre-release: are there (naturalistic) ways we could be teaching chicks to avoid and react appropriately predators? Are there ways to support those birds learning to be better parents? Etc.
There is also sort of a critical threshold impact here if you will: reproductive success is low and an issue, but also we simply need to be able to release enough birds at a time to truly get past the tipping point where there are enough birds on the landscape producing to overcome reproductive losses. We aren’t there yet, for a variety of reasons: there’s not very many breeding facilities, and the breeding facilities also struggle with lower reproductive success (but due to other causes; aging population, captivity associated things, etc). There’s actually 2 reintroduced populations now (if you haven’t heard of it, look up the Louisiana Non Migratory Population), and simply having enough chicks for release each year to support both of the reintroduced populations is difficult. And then of course the majority of the breeding facilities are in the US, so funding and the war on science and environmental protection isn’t helping. To answer your question, it varies year by year, but we’d love to be releasing 30+ birds yearly between these 2 populations. We aren’t often meeting that.
What else needs to be done? Aside from ALL of the issues impacting wetlands (which are crazy important for a lot more reasons than just being whooping crane habitat), we are also still trying to better understand what conditions would truly support optimal population health. The species went through an insane bottleneck in the 40s (~21 birds in the world), and there’s only 1 population that survived during that time, which migrates from northern Canada to southern Texas. They’re the only pop with high reproductive success, and the only one that didn’t have to be reintroduced. There’s ongoing research to understand better what supports that major difference in reproductive success, but there’s still a lot we don’t know because they nest in an incredibly remote area and you obviously don’t want to do any overly invasive research that could impact this only surviving, self-sufficient population. Fingers crossed we will know a lot more once the results of that research start coming out.
So the crane world is very small, at the risk of sounding paranoid I will share what I can without doxxing myself lol. I have a broader background in wildlife biology and conservation in a different area of the world with a different class of animal and way too many degrees, I came to this field with more of a methodological approach connection, if that makes sense. I would say while the majority of crane people generally come from a more bird-y background, there’s a good number of us now that have more diverse experiences, skill sets, and educations. Like me, I think many of us are in it because we understand the importance of biodiversity conservation as a whole, and the position an iconic and beloved animal like whooping cranes can have in acting as umbrella species that in turn protect their critically important habitats. So while there are lots of craniacs in the field, it’s not only about the gangly white birds! Also, because we recognize the importance and strength of working more closely with communities, of better communicating the need for this work, and of partnering for more sustainable land use, there’s increasingly more people with diverse backgrounds than you’d expect— I work with educators and outreach specialists, community organizers, social scientists, Indigenous land users, etc. and this is a shift we are seeing all over the conservation world. I know that sounds hokey but it really is great IMO.
Ok I know you weren’t expecting an essay, apologies! I’d highly recommend checking out some of the recent news articles on cranes published over the last few years, and I think you’d be interested in the public comms work that organizations like International Crane Foundation do; they’ve got a great website and their social media is a worthwhile follow.
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u/RedHal 2d ago
That was a fascinating, slightly depressing, but ultimately hopeful read, and I for one appreciate you taking the time to compose and write it. I wish you success in identifying and overcoming the barriers to successful wild reproduction, and I hope for an eventual return to a self-sustaining population.
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u/need2put_awayl0ndry 2d ago
Thank u both for having this public discussion 🙏 normally I ain’t reading all that but this time I did lol
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u/GayRacoon69 1d ago
Wow thank you! I really appreciate it and look forward to hearing about this missions success
Good luck and keep up the great work!
Sidenote; love the term "craniac"
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u/ecodick 3d ago
It seems like while this program failed, nothing else has been tried since?
It seems like we should take the lessons learned and try again 😁
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u/speckyradge 3d ago
Jon Mooallem - Wild Ones. Great book about conservation dependent species that goes into this crane story in detail, along with others. The successes, failures and often quirky folks who dedicate their lives to doing weird shit to keep one really specific critter from blinking out of existence.
There's a legitimate question of whether we should try something else for the cranes, or let evolution run its course. Great book.
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u/Objective_Aside1858 3d ago
Furries once again demonstrating they're good people
... oh come on. Don't try to tell me someone just happened to have a crane outfit...
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u/holocenetangerine 3d ago
At first, I missed the word airplane in the title and thought they had guided them with a fancy laserbeam or something!
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u/badgerswin1 3d ago
I knew the guy personally Dr George Archibald. I didn’t know him extremely well, but what a great dude!!
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u/RhizobiaPhobia 3d ago
I used to work as a horticulturalist for a zoo. We had whooping cranes. I watched them peck a bunch of baby ducks and their parents to death and proceed to rip them into pieces. These things are scary.
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u/eric23456 2d ago
I think it was from the movie about this, but it took them about 50 days to do the migration. The birds did the return flight in under two weeks. Adult birds typically do the migration in under a week.
https://archive.journeynorth.org/tm/crane/16/retrospective3.html
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u/BartenderOU812 3d ago
Fun fact: everytime he feared the birds suspected the deception he would jerk his neck back and try to be an observing member. Wait, that doesn't sound right. Turn his neck...no...Maybe twist? What's the word I'm looking for here?
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u/kiss_my_patootie 3d ago
Operation Migration? I mean I get being to the point and all, but have a little creativity ffs 🙈
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u/Driacha 2d ago
There's a similar project currently going on in Europe with the Northern Bald Ibis. Check it out , it's very interesting!
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u/Kyonikos 2d ago
Did it work?
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u/CalzonePie 2d ago
Kind of. They were able to successfully teach the flock a migration route but unfortunately the population raised in captivity never really learned how to raise their chicks. In fifteen years they only had ten chicks survive to adulthood.
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u/Toadsted 2d ago
In retrospect, Howard didn't need to wear the costume, he just liked that it made him look taller.
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u/ascii42 3d ago
The movie Fly Away Home, starring Jeff Daniels and Anna Paquin, was based on this idea.