THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 5 , 2019. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A
BY BEN GUARINOBefore Jessica Meir became a
NASA astronaut who will blast
into space from Russia this
month, she made a career of
studying animals that live at ex-
tremes. She followed elephant
seals and emperor penguins as
they swam through frigid waters.
She raised a dozen bar-headed
geese, capable of flying three miles
high, from the moment they
hatched out of their eggs. They
treated h er as their mother.
Few creatures dare to fly over
the tallest mountains on Earth.
Bar-headed geese are an excep-
tion. Above the Himalayas, where
the atmosphere is so thin that
helicopters struggle to fly and hu-
man exertion is nearly impossible,
the birds beat their wings as they
migrate from India to Mongolia.
Meir led the geese — they fol-
lowed her anywhere — into a wind
tunnel designed to test subma-
rines and sports equipment. A
year later, Julia York, then a stu-
dent at the University of British
Columbia, helped another group
of geese fly in the machine. When
scientists lowered the oxygen the
geese breathed, the animals
chilled their blood and slowed
their metabolism, Meir, York and
their colleagues reported in a
study published Tuesday in the
journal e Life.
The geese “would be absolutely
fine” in conditions that would
“probably kill us and many other
animals,” said Graham Scott, an
expert in low-oxygen biology at
McMaster University in Ontario
who did not participate in this
study.
Bar-headed geese and their “ ex-
traordinary migration” have at-
tracted d ecades of scientific inter-
est, said Douglas L. A ltshuler, w ho
studies flight behavior at the Uni-
versity of British Columbia. (Alt-
shuler has worked closely w ith the
study authors but was not a mem-
ber of the research team behind
the new paper.) I n an earlier study,
scientists trained geese to run on
treadmills.
To get birds to fly in a wind
tunnel, the study authors took ad-
vantage of the avian behavior
known as imprinting: Freshly
hatched birds will bond with the
first large shape they see. But few
researchers use imprinting as a
scientific technique, because rais-
ing birds requires so much time.
Study author William K. Milsom,
a University of British Columbia
expert in the respiratory systems
of animals, knew of only one other
research group, based in Britain,
where bar-headed geese had im-
printed on researchers. Before
this work, no biologists had flown
the geese in wind tunnels while
reducing their oxygen.
One set of geese imprinted on
Meir in 2010, and another gaggle
imprinted on York in 2011. Meir
met her goslings in summer 2010,
as they cracked out of their e ggs at
the Sylvan Heights Bird Park in
Scotland Neck, N.C.
“ It w as one of the m ost amazing
things I’ve ever experienced in my
life,” Meir said. “ I say this jokingly,
but there’s a little bit of truth to it,
too: I was a woman in my m id-30s
when I was imprinting these geese... so there’s a lot going on, with
the imprinting of my 12 baby gos-
lings.”
Meir spent almost all of her
waking hours with the goslings at
the bird park. They chirped and
cried at the sound of her voice as
she approached their pens each
morning. She took baby birds for
walks. When she sat on a blanket
to read, they smothered her in a
fluffy g oose-pile. “They would just
nap and snuggle and cuddle up
inside,” s he said.
When the birds were old
enough to travel, Meir took her
geese in carrier crates on a plane
to Seattle. They drove through
customs across the Canadian bor-
der to the University of British
Columbia, one of the few univer-
sities with a wind tunnel that
could accommodate the geese. On
the Vancouver campus, she t aught
them t o fly.
She began by biking away from
the geese on a secluded farm. Ea-
ger to stay w ith h er, they started t o
run. “And then they realize thatthey can keep up better if t hey fly,”
she said. After two days, the birds
flew faster than she could bike, so
Meir switched to a motor scooter
and led them along a quiet street
on the university campus.
“It would be flying so close to
me that its wing tip would be
sometimes b rushing my a rm. I am
looking right into the eye of this
flying bird, not to mention my
baby,” Meir said. When she
stopped on her scooter, they
would stop with h er.
Except when they didn’t. The
road partly runs along a nude
beach, from which the scientists
once rescued a wayward goose,
Milsom said. One goose l anded o n
an athletic field during a field
hockey game and scurried after
the players. Another confused
bird, lost in a supermarket park-
ing lot, began to follow people inand out of t he store, a s if searching
for Meir.
Other researchers warned Alt-
shuler that the trials would fail, he
said. The devices r equired t o study
the geese were Rube Goldberg-
like contraptions: masks fitted to
the geese bills, connected by tubes
to tanks of oxygen and nitrogen,
which enabled the scientists to
control the air the birds breathed.
The 30-yard-long tunnel, open
to the outdoors, was so chilly the
scientists wore heavy jackets. York
kept her hands free to clap and
encourage the birds. (Geese are
not motivated by food; no matter
how delicious a piece of lettuce,
geese cannot be bribed to fly.)
Seven birds flew in the tunnel,
one at a time, while wearing the
masks. “If you adjust the wind
speed of the w ind tunnel, then t he
birds are almost motionless,” Mil-som said. The scientists fitted the
birds with sensors to gauge their
heart rate as well as the tempera-
ture a nd gases in their blood.
Meir and her colleagues tested
the birds at three oxygen concen-
trations: normal oxygen, equiva-
lent to sea level; diminished oxy-
gen, comparable to 3.4 miles up;
and very little oxygen, equal to
about 5.6 miles high. A few birds
flew in all conditions.
When humans exercise, our
muscles warm up and our blood
heats with it. This is true for most
animals, but n ot these geese.
“The fact that their blood
cooled during flight has really im-
portant implications for how
birds can fly in low-oxygen condi-
tions,” S cott said. I n lower temper-
atures, hemoglobin molecules
bind more tightly to oxygen —
meaning each red blood cell can
carry more oxygen. T he a mount of
oxygen pumped in the blood per
heartbeat s oared.
Despite the demands of flight,
the birds’ metabolism slowed as
the external oxygen dropped.
“They proved quite conclusively
that it’s through a reduction in
metabolic rate” t hat these a nimals
can fly in oxygen-poor conditions,
Altshuler said. What Meir and her
colleagues accomplished in the
wind tunnel “tells us more about
the physiology of bar-headed
geese and flight than almost all of
the research that came before it,
combined,” he said.
Meir suspects the animals shut
down some body functions, such
as digestion, when the air thins. “ If
you don’t need to keep delivering
blood to the digestive system,” s he
said, “you can save some oxygen
there.”
The geese’s ability to cope with
extreme environments cannot be
directly mimicked in humans, but
Scott said it could inspire poten-
tial t herapies for p eople in low-ox-
ygen conditions.
Meir will travel to the Interna-
tional Space Station in late Sep-
tember. “It is not at all surprising
to me to know that she is an
astronaut,” Altshuler said. “These
are people who are willing to take
on ambitious projects that should
not be able to be accomplished in
the time frame they give them-
selves.”
In the extreme environment of
space, Meir won’t be conducting
her own research — she’ll be a test
subject.
“I’m finally paying my dues,”
Meir said. “I’m going to be t he one
poked and prodded.”
[email protected]NASA astronaut as Mother Goose
She raised bar-headed geese, who imprinted on her after hatching, to study their hearts
MILSOM LAB/UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA
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