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This odd habit by our feathered friends has long been theorized, but now German scientists say they have definitive proof for the first time ever. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute in Seewiesen, Bavaria, announced on Wednesday that they had proved for the first time that birds can fly while sleeping and still stay aloft. The researchers were able to monitor the brainwaves and movements of great frigate birds from the Galapagos Islands, whose airborne journeys may last for months. They strapped devices to the heads of female birds to measure brain activity over the course of ten days. […]...

A new study shows that frigatebirds routinely fly for months at a time without landing, skimming the sea surface only occasionally to catch floating prey. Previously, scientists thought these birds and another bird species, known as swift birds, only remained aloft for many days at a time... To stay aloft for so long, the study found, these birds use some of the same techniques that glider pilots do. They take advantage of upward-moving air underneath tropical cumulus clouds — the clouds that often look like popping popcorn kernels in the sky.

Several million years ago, the Galápagos Islands popped, volcanically, out of the Pacific Ocean. The South American mainland being 600 miles away and nothing else nearby, each island was a tabula rasa. Various birds, lizards, sea mammals and seeds blew in and washed up. Biological colonization occurred by dumb luck. Very dumb luck, to judge by how the local critters flap, crawl and paddle up and present themselves to visiting omnivorous bipeds for examination of gustatory potential. Pirates, whalers and other nonmembers of the Sierra Club had an estimated 100,000 friendly, curious Galápagos giant tortoises for lunch. Isolation allowed unusual...