When I wrote about European starlings and their complex North American origin story, I didn't expect readers to be so interested in a single word. As feedback poured in, it became clear that this gnarly-sounding six-letter word and the field of scientific inquiry that produced it were worth closer examination.
On October 4, 1960, a plane nose-dived into Boston Harbor after taking off. Only 10 crew members and passengers survived.
As investigators sorted through the rubble, they found more and more black feathers. Snarge is the material that eventually came to be known as.
No one could say what kind of bird brought down the plane, but investigators surmised that the engines had ingested a flock of birds. The investigators called an ornithologist who was an expert on feathers.
Ms. Laybourne had a large collection of museum feathers. The wreck of the Electra was not a large bird like a vulture, turkey or crow. The feathers came from the European starling.
Wildlife biologists were hired by airports to take information from Ms. Laybourne to discourage certain bird species from flying around their flight paths. Ms. Laybourne became a science and air-traffic safety legend. You would be right to call her the Queen of Snarge.
She said that she first heard of the term snarge when she was at the museum.
A Canada goose can be lodged inside an airplane engine. Or it could be a broken and burned gull feather. It can be as small as a rusty-red smudge on the nose of an airliner.
All snarge is important, no matter what form it takes.
The industry standard back in Ms. Laybourne's day was the physical comparison of snarge specimen beneath a microscope.
Dr. Dove said that she washed and cleaned the feathers and matched the pattern and colors of the museum specimen.
Dr. Dove and her colleagues use DNA analysis because a snarge sample may not always include a recognizable piece of feather. They solve the mystery with a combination of techniques if samples are too small or degraded to yield DNA.
Real-world consequences of determining the origin of snarge can be found. The airline industry started making engines with collision prevention in mind after starlings were implicated in the Electra crash. Many plane models can survive a hit from a bird up to eight pounds.
Even though technological advances don't mean that an aircraft is impervious to a bird strike, they do mean that an aircraft is more resistant to bird strikes.
Even small animals can be deadly.
"Starlings have been referred to as feathered bullets," said Richard Dolbeer, science adviser for the Airport Wildlife Hazards program.
The Federal Aviation Administration and wildlife biologists have worked with the Feather Identification Lab to identify problem birds and discourage them from hanging out nearby.
Management options include scaring off birds with falcons, noise cannons and distress calls. Occasionally, they turn to lethal measures.
Other strategies include removing garbage and putting nets over roosting areas.
We want to make the airport as uncomfortable to birds as possible.
Snarge happens despite these efforts. Nowadays, with more flights in the air than ever, aircraft whack birds every single day, and that's because of the fact that Wilbur Wright crushed a flock of birds way back in 1905. 17,358 strikes were documented by the F.A.A. Most of the time, the damage is little or no.
It's interesting that Snarge is not limited to birds.
Bats and insects become snarge. There are more than one species that show up, including cats and rabbits.
What is the explanation?
Sometimes a bird of prey will get scared by an approaching airplane and drop something in its talons, which is then sucked into a jet engine. It is1-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-6556
When you're in charge of the snarge, it's never dull.
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