Avian Fluid Dynamics

This morning, I found the following in my Twitter feeds:

I had to follow the link on that one, which took me to a PDF copy of an article from the journal Polar Biology, entitled "Pressures produced when penguins pooh - calculations on avian defaecation", by Victor Benno Meyer-Rochow and Jozsef Gal of the International University in Bremen, Germany.

This is apparently the single most frequently downloaded paper in that journal, and contains the following as Figure 1:

"Fig. 1 Position of model penguin during defaecation and physical parameters used to calculate rectal pressure necessary to expel faecal material over a distance of 40 cm" (Meyer-Rochow and Gal, 2003)

This paper is actually a pretty interesting read for those who've studied fluid dynamics - and really, who isn't interested in the fluid dynamics of poop?

Mama Geek, a biologist and former chemical engineer, was especially predisposed to it. She was excited when she saw that the paper notes that penguin poop is still in the laminar flow regime ("What's the Reynolds number?!") and does not, as the abstract so delicately puts it, "lead to an energetically wasteful turbulent flow."

I have two thoughts on this one. First, remind me not to stand downwind of any chinstrap or Adélie penguins. Two: "Science. It works..." (xkcd to the rescue again).