CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — A tender bar-tailed godwit seems to have set a continuous distance report for migratory birds through flying no less than 13,560 kilometers (8,435 miles) from Alaska to the Australian state of Tasmania, a chicken skilled mentioned Friday.

The chicken was once tagged as a hatchling in Alaska all over the Northern Hemisphere summer time with a monitoring GPS chip and tiny sun panel that enabled a world analysis group to observe its first annual migration around the Pacific Ocean, Birdlife Tasmania convenor Eric Woehler mentioned. Since the chicken was once so younger, its gender wasn’t recognized.

Elderly about 5 months, it left southwest Alaska on the Yuko-Kuskokwim Delta on Oct. 13 and touched down 11 days later at Ansons Bay at the island of Tasmania’s northeastern tip on Oct. 24, in keeping with knowledge from Germany’s Max Plank Institute for Ornithology. The analysis has but to be printed or peer reviewed.

The chicken began on a southwestern route towards Japan then grew to become southeast over Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, a map printed through New Zealand’s Pukoro Miranda Shorebird Middle presentations.

The chicken was once once more monitoring southwest when it flew over or close to Kiribati and New Caledonia, then previous the Australian mainland ahead of turning immediately west for Tasmania, Australia’s maximum southerly state. The satellite tv for pc path confirmed it coated 13,560 kilometers (8,435 miles) with out preventing.

“Whether or not that is an twist of fate, whether or not this chicken were given misplaced or whether or not this is a part of a typical trend of migration for the species, we nonetheless don’t know,” mentioned Woehler, who is a part of the analysis undertaking.

Guinness International Information lists the longest recorded migration through a chicken with out preventing for meals or relaxation as 12,200 km (7,580 miles) through a satellite-tagged male bar-tailed godwit flying from Alaska to New Zealand.

That flight was once recorded in 2020 as a part of the similar decade-old analysis undertaking, which additionally comes to China’s Fudan College, New Zealand’s Massey College and the World Flyway Community.

The similar chicken broke its personal report with a 13,000-kilometer (8,100-mile) flight on its subsequent migration final 12 months, researchers say. However Guinness has but to recognize that feat.

Woehler mentioned researchers didn’t know whether or not the most recent chicken, recognized through its satellite tv for pc tag 234684, flew on my own or as a part of a flock.

“There are so few birds which have been tagged, we don’t understand how consultant or in a different way this match is,” Woehler mentioned.

“It can be that part the birds that do the migration from Alaska come to Tasmania immediately slightly than thru New Zealand or it could be 1%, or it could be that that is the primary it’s ever came about,” he added.

Grownup birds go away Alaska previous than juveniles, so the tagged chicken was once not likely to have adopted extra skilled vacationers south, Woehler mentioned.

Woehler hopes to look the chicken as soon as rainy climate clears within the faraway nook of Tasmania, the place it’s going to fatten up having misplaced part its frame weight on its adventure.