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March 27, 2009

Strange But True!

Q. What is “snarge,” and how are the good folks at the Smithsonian Institution's Feather Identification Laboratory working to make your next plane flight safer?

A. Believe it or not, snarge is the bird goo left over from a collision with an airplane. And it's not just birds. “We've had frogs, turtles, snakes, even a cat once struck at high altitudes,” says the Smithsonian's Carla Dove. Birds like hawks and herons will occasionally drop their quarry into oncoming planes. Recently, she sent a “snake” sample to the DNA lab and it came back as rabbit. “How do you explain to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that we had a rabbit strike at 1,000 feet?”


 
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