"You can drop a mouse down a thousand-yard mine shaft; and, on arriving at the bottom, it gets a slight shock and walks away, provided that the ground is fairly soft. A rat is killed, a man is broken, a horse splashes" - JBS Haldane "On being the right size"

http://irl.cs.ucla.edu/papers/right-size.html

It wasn't the initial jump that concerned me, it was the ass over teakettle action all down the rocks at the bottom that concerned me.

Here's a video for those interested:

http://www.arkive.org/barnacle-goose/branta-leucopsis/video-...

That's a different video BTW, it shows more of the preparation for leaving the nest, but less of actual fall.

You should watch both of them (this and the one in the article).

Also, you can throw a mouse out of an airplane and it can walk (scamper) away from the impact.

It's the surface-area to volume (weight) ratio. Small things have a higher surface-area-to-weight, and therefore lower terminal velocity than big things.

There are lots of scaling effects which seem counter intuitive.

Recently I was reading about Terminal Velocity too. Turns out a few people managed to survive falls at that speed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_fall#Surviving_falls.

Sometimes when I'm in a plane I daydream about what body shapes I'd make in free fall in an attempt to increase my wind resistance and decrease my terminal velocity. I also wonder if it would be better to land on trees, water, or a really really steep snow covered mountain.

I'd love to fall in small trees standing on a steep snowy surface leading to a lake.

Or maybe having a http://imgur.com/aLaTfIX under your seat ?

Scaling also causes problems for the magic school bus. Microfluidics prevent our lungs from working at that scale.

Wow, I found this to be a great stimulus for thinking about the concept of instinct. For some reason -- maybe it's the subtle movements by the chick to adjust its "flight path" -- it really makes me intuitively understand instinct as pure mechanical inclination, rather than something more magical.

That first contact with the ground... jesus. It was difficult for me to believe that the chick they showed at the end was the same one that took the plunge. That camera shot wouldn't have been nearly as remarkable if the chick had died.

My 16-year old son started driving a few months ago. I can identify with the gosling's parents.

Me too. My 16 year old son just totaled our car on his 6th drive out on his learner's permit. He was already nervous about driving, like those poor goslings at the edge of the cliff.

Watch out for those unprotected lefts! It's now the third person I know who crashed into someone during a left turn on a solid green when they were a novice driver.

+1 for the left turns. I was involved in an accident caused by a new driver (looked to be around 16 years old) who was making a left turn without checking for oncoming traffic.

Roughly what fraction of the goslings don't survive the fall?

Things like this make me think of an alien David Attenborough commenting on humans.

"and here we have the spartans, a strange group. After birth they attempt to drown their young in fermented grapes..."

That initial choice.... you could feel the decision making. Gut wrenching to watch after the first event... it kept going on and on.

Watch it without sound if possible (and add sound on the next watch!).

Here's a RadioLab piece about cats falling out of high rise windows https://www.wnyc.org/radio/#/ondemand/94843 and the wikipedia article on High-rise syndrome http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-rise_syndrome

The smaller they are, the less hard they fall. Also: I knew there were goose barnacles; never heard of barnacle geese before, though.

I don't think I've ever been disappointed by any BBC Earth material, but that was surprisingly captivating!

This, my friends, is why there's no child protection services in the goose world.

I read the title and thought this was going to be about some expert rock climber called "Barnacle" Gosling.

An old sailor turned rock climber, always the thrill seeker.

I spent a bit of time looking for something with a better title that would cover the same info. I couldn't find anything else remotely comparable (though there is an assortment of videos, I couldn't find an actual article). It's one of the limitations on HN: You are supposed to use the original title. That sometimes causes issues.

I was confused why the first letter of Barnacle's last name wasn't capitalized.