I couldn't find an explanation of why one can't just put a real giraffe in a tank, fill it with water and "see what happens". (Obviously I suggest doing this in such a way that one can quickly rescue the giraffe in case it's not buoyant after all.)
It makes complete sense to me that most land mammals have at least rudimentary swimming capabilities, because it's probably selected for. Not very often, of course, but whenever there's a flood, all non-swimming animals in a region die at once, which is a lot of selection pressure.
I guess the trouble and expense outweighs the curiosity. In particular, I bet the intersection of people who have a spare giraffe and people who don't mind an ASPCA/PETA protest is very small.
Another example of an easily testable issue: Do people swim faster or slower in a more viscous fluid? Newton and Huygens, among others, argued back and forth over this, but no one bothered setting up an experiment until 2004. The paper went on to win an Ig Nobel Prize. (Answer: Viscosity doesn't seem to affect a person's swimming speed.)
Along the same lines, the Mythbusters had an episode about swimming in syrup. Here's a link to the first part of the episode: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hs4Q5jZSJbA
He says: "In the case of the question "Can giraffes swim?", we just aren't able to use real giraffes, so our approach is - at the moment - the only one we can use to test it."
That made me laugh as well. I mean, you're right why don't they just put a giraffe in a tank? Of course that brings to mind imagery of a 19th (or earlier) century scientist that would likely not have any care for the animal's wellbeing.
I'd imagine it's a combination of two factors. Firstly cost and secondly public image. I'm guessing a giraffe tank would be quite unjustifiably expensive and I could well imagine a university funding board rejecting this idea purely from the bad PR potential of scientists killing of giraffes rather pointlessly.
A silly (& interesting) question, but good science journalism. What a difference it makes when the author actually knows and cares!
Is it just me, or are a lot of the animations and diagrams on Discovery channel just brain-dead? Very often, the geometry is wrong, or there are lots of places where the animator reveals subtle cluelessness. Contrast this to the diagrams in this article. The pictures themselves can spur "ah ha!" moments because they are based on real dynamics.
(Horses and dogs seem to exert effort to keep their heads above water. Here's why!)
Somebody told me when I was 17 that he was so smart he could "teach baby chickens to swim"
I spent 20 years wondering about chickens and their swimming ability, finally giving up. Why did I wonder so much? Because it was unsolved, it was a simple question, and everybody had a different opinion about the matter. You'd think that something that simple would be obvious. As Kahn said about a different thing He tasks me! He tasks me, and I shall have him! I'll chase him round the Moons of Nibia, and round the Antares Maelstrom, and round perdition's flames before I give him up!
It is uniquely annoying.
During that process, however, which included blogging, diagramming various chicken breeds, and questions posed to experts, people told me that giraffes also could not swim. "You take a giraffe, drop him out of a helicopter over the ocean, and he'll drown"
I find this hard to believe, and without access to a helicopter or a giraffe, cannot say for sure. But scanning the article, I get to the end:
Unfortunately, we don't really know enough to be sure whether these distributional limits actually have anything to do with the ability or inability of giraffes to cross water.
I may get hit by a truck tomorrow, but at least I know that the computational fluid dynamics of giraffes, and perhaps chickens, will continue to be studied. One day, my friends, we will know the answer. :)
Wait, what? Twenty years of wondering and controversy and you didn’t even test it? It seems to me that you are rather interested in a good argument than a good answer :)
If I were to test this I would look at two things:
1. Can you teach chickens anything at all? (You want to explore the teachability of chickens first – if chickens drown in the second step and you find out that you can’t actually teach chickens anything meaningful you can already be pretty confident that teaching chickens to swim is impossible.)
2. How do “default” chickens behave when thrown into water?
2b. (If chickens drown when thrown into water:) How would you have to change their behavior if you wanted them to keep afloat? Is such a change within the scope of chickens’ teachability?
Seems like perfectly reasonable, straightforward testing to me. Something the Mythbusters could (should, actually!) do.
I don't have a spare chicken, so I'm not totally sure, but I think chickens would float quite well. And their default flap wings to run faster behavior would also do pretty well to get them moving in water.
I have literally typed 4 replies to ugh, deleting them before I posted them and then coming back to this page.
I refuse to start this again. 20 years! I will say that there are a lot of problems here, including type of chicken, time of year, and whether the chicken is in fear of it's life or if it knows you're just playing around. I think you'd have the same problem with giraffes.
EDIT: It's also in the feathers. Chickens aren't ducks, so their feathers are made differently. Proponents of non-swimming chickens point to the lack of webbed feet, quality of the feathers, and absence of any aquatic chicken relatives.
You should, of course, rescue the chicken if it can’t swim. That’s not as wasteful and you can test different methods of getting the chicken into water.
– edit: More floating than swimming. Now you start having the really stupid arguments: Is putting a chicken into water and letting it just float there the same as teaching a chicken how to swim? Ah, semantics. Bane of humanity.
I'm sure you're referring to the famous UncleFroggy swimming YouTube chicken. I've seen the video, but many questions remain.
Was this a stunt chicken?
Was there a chicken flotation device used?
How many other chickens drowned before this one swam? Sure, we have the comments from the guy who shot the video, but how reliable is a man who throws chickens into his swimming pool and video tapes them? A guy that would do that would do about anything, including faking a video. I notice that there are several times that the chicken looks directly at the camera, and you'll notice that the chicken never clucks while he is talking.
Is there an assurance that this chicken wasn't trained before the video?
:)
(To answer the original comment, yes, the arguing is much more fun than the result)
Next up, differences between chickens and giraffes when viscosity is varied. Would a chicken in molasses do better than a giraffe? I think the answer is obvious
It makes complete sense to me that most land mammals have at least rudimentary swimming capabilities, because it's probably selected for. Not very often, of course, but whenever there's a flood, all non-swimming animals in a region die at once, which is a lot of selection pressure.