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Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you list some examples of where this is used in engineering (software or otherwise)?
HVAC systems. The outgoing air goes through a heat exchanger to transfer heat to the colder incoming air.
This doesn’t explain why the interstitial fluids and cells themselves in a birds feet avoid freezing. Presumably, either their feet can simply be maintained at slightly above freezing or they use some form of antifreeze. Does anyone know?
The article says this: It’s pretty much all tendons and bones. So, unlike your human foot, which contains plenty of moist muscle tissue, a bird’s foot contains only very little fluid in its cells.
This doesn’t explain why the interstitial fluids and cells themselves in a birds feet avoid freezing. Presumably, either their feet can simply be maintained at slightly above freezing or they use some form of antifreeze. Does anyone know?
Exactly. I want to know what cellular metabolic tricks they use to keep their foot cells working at just over freezing temperatures.
See extremophiles, psychrophiles, etc.
Inspired by Wim Hof, I've started doing short barefoot snow walks. Within days, even between multiple walks on the same day, my feet became more cold-tolerant.
They now recover from the cold faster, stay warm in the snow longer, and when I'm indoors, my feet are no longer cold without socks.
My feet used to be cold to the touch and feel cold subjectively without socks.
I was sleeping on a balcony in Hawaii on a trip, when I woke up there was a one legged pigeon that was hanging out right next to me. Ever since then I noticed quite a few birds with a missing foot. Makes me wonder how much sensitivity birds have in their feet.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Looks can sometimes be deceiving with regards to one-legged birds. My pet goose (yeah, weird pet, but she was from an egg I saved and incubated) does a trick where when she sleeps she puts her head under under a wing and lifts a leg up -- she sleeps on a single leg with her head tucked like a big ball of balanced feathers with tremendous balance and grace. She tucks her leg up so high into her down fluff that you can…
I know the behaviour you are describing, but the pigeon had its foot severed at the ankle. I saw the actual leg, so its not that it was hiding it. Looked more like pirate stub.
This doesn’t explain why the interstitial fluids and cells themselves in a birds feet avoid freezing. Presumably, either their feet can simply be maintained at slightly above freezing or they use some form of antifreeze. Does anyone know?
I don’t know, but I’m always amazed at how animals don’t just all freeze to death and die. I know that many do but still.
We're capable of it too, many of us just don't try because it is uncomfortable at first.
I think it's worth doing, because the process of adapting also conditions our bodies to be stronger and more resilient in many ways.
Cold conditioning has been proven to boost the immune system and many other health factors.
This is anecdata. I am also not a bird. Inspired by Wim Hof, I've started doing short barefoot snow walks. Within days, even between multiple walks on the same day, my feet became more cold-tolerant. They now recover from the cold faster, stay warm in the snow longer, and when I'm indoors, my feet are no longer cold without socks. My feet used to be cold to the touch and feel cold subjectively without socks.
I was sleeping on a balcony in Hawaii on a trip, when I woke up there was a one legged pigeon that was hanging out right next to me. Ever since then I noticed quite a few birds with a missing foot. Makes me wonder how much sensitivity birds have in their feet.
While building nests, birds will find and pick up man-made string, which becomes tangled in their feet, eventually cutting off circulation and killing the foot.
https://www.google.com/search?q=pigeon+string+foot
https://www.pigeonrescue.org/2018/09/11/destringing-pigeons-...