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How does a condor soar for hours without flapping its wings?

High in the Andes Mountains of South America, a giant soars in the sky. With a wingspan of 3.2 meters and a weight of up to 15 kilograms, it is the Andean condor, the largest flying bird on our planet!

I'll tell you an incredible discovery. Scientists attached special sensors to condors and discovered that during a 5-hour flight and 170 kilometers of travel, the condor did not make… a single flap of its wings! It was just flying. How is that possible?

The secret is in thermals. These are warm air currents that rise up from the sun-heated earth or rocks. Imagine how the air trembles over the asphalt in the summer - this is a warm current. The condor looks for such currents in the mountains, enters them and simply circles, and the current itself carries it up. Like an escalator in a shopping mall!

When the condor rises high — 5 kilometers! — it begins to glide in the right direction. And so — from thermal to thermal — it flies huge distances without getting tired.

Why is the condor so big? It is nature's orderly. Condors eat animals that have already died and prevent diseases from spreading. One condor can eat up to 5 kilograms of meat at a time! And then it doesn't eat for several days - like a boa constrictor.

Condors are very intelligent and live up to 70 years. They mate for life and only lay one egg every two years. That's why they've become so rare—in California in the 1980s, there were only 22 birds left! Scientists saved them—now there are several hundred condors.

The ancient Incas considered the condor a messenger of the gods. And if you watch it soar silently in the sky, you'll understand why.