Pain in the neck

091016 gannet 1
Credit: Sunny Jung / Virginia Tech

Researchers simulated a gannet plunging into water, capturing the process with a high-speed camera, to see how they manage to crash into the water at high speeds without injuring their seemingly fragile neck.

The work, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found interactions between hydrodynamic forces, neck elasticity and muscle contraction protected the birds.

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