Why do birds fly in a V formation?
Have you ever watched birds fly by over you in a strange arrangement? Have you ever wondered why they fly in this way? Chief biologist, Bruce Batt answers this question in an article posted on scientificamerican.com. The causal question of this article is why migratory birds fly in V and sometime J formations. Mr. Batt answers this question with two well-supported and complementary explanations. One of his explained hypotheses is that these birds use such arrangements to conserve energy by creating a vortex field with the wings of the birds flying in front. If this is true, then by monitoring birds on short distance flights, one should observe that birds do not use these formations, due to the small amount of energy needed to perform these flights, and this is precisely what is seen, therefore supporting this theory that birds only use these methods during long distance or migratory flights. The other hypothesis in this article is that these birds use the formations as a form of commun
