Claims extracted
23
sentences that state something as happening or true
Uncertain
4%
1 of 23 hedged
("reportedly", "may", "according to")
Leaning
not political
takes no side on a contested political question
Publisher signals
60/100
NPR's corrections and
hedging, across everything collected from it. Not a measure of accuracy.
Outlets on this story
1
Science
Same framing elsewhere
1
articles that frame the event the way this one does
Even birds get jet lagged, study shows
New research shows that humans are not the only species to get jet lag: Some birds appear to experience it too.
asserted
birds → get → it
A study published in the journal Science found that a type of seabird known as the Manx shearwater appears to become slightly disoriented during long flights across the Atlantic Ocean.
asserted
type → publish → Ocean
That disorientation, the authors say, is due to the bird's internal clock falling out of sync with the sun's position in the sky.
asserted
clock → say → sky
They look a little like seagulls, but "they're actually very closely related to an albatross," said Patrick Lewin, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Oxford.
asserted
Lewin → look → Oxford
Shearwaters mate for life, and when they breed, a couple lays just one egg.
asserted
couple → mate → egg
Then they take turns incubating it: "One partner will sit on the egg nonstop while the other one goes out to sea," Lewin said.
asserted
Lewin → take → sea
For up to two weeks the hunting partners scour the North Atlantic for fish and squid, often travelling hundreds of miles from their nests.
asserted
partners → scour → nests
Once these birds' bellies are full "they absolutely bomb it back to their colony," Lewin said.
asserted
Lewin → bomb → colony
Often they make the long journey home in just a day or so.
asserted
they → make → day
Which raised an interesting question: Do Manx shearwaters feel jet lag (or perhaps more aptly, flap lag)?
asserted
shearwaters → raise → lag
To see if these little birds really did feel the effects of flying through time zones like humans do, Lewin used a remarkable tool – for 20 years, his colleagues had been tagging birds with GPS trackers and collecting data on their flights out to the Atlantic and back.
asserted
colleagues → see → Atlantic
He figured he could see the jet lag in their flights.
uncertain
he → figure → flights
That's because the Manx shearwaters are believed to use the sun to navigate.
asserted
shearwaters → believe → sun
"To use the sun as a compass you have to know what time of day it is," Lewin said.
asserted
Lewin → use → day
If the shearwaters had the wrong time of day, they would fly the wrong way.
asserted
they → have → day
That's exactly what Lewin and his colleagues saw.
asserted
Lewin → see → what
As the birds rushed back to their partners and eggs, they veered ever-so-slightly off course.
asserted
they → rush → course
It wasn't much: A seven-degree error, the maximum deviation observed, only took a bird out of its way by about three miles on a 600-mile journey.
asserted
error → observe → journey
"It's a really small addition," he said.
asserted
he → say → ?
"This paper is so cool," said Alice Boyle, a biologist at the Centre for Animals on the Move at Western University in Ontario, Canada who was not part of the study.
asserted
who → say → study
Boyle said pretty much every creature on the planet, from corals to chipmunks, has to navigate its environment, yet it's rare to see a study showing navigation decisions in action.
asserted
it → say → action
That's what makes this type of GPS work so valuable.
asserted
type → make → work
"It's using these wild birds that travel to completely remote places and we're able to learn so much about how they do that," she said.
asserted
she → use → that
The Aporia
