Wired News: ‘Each day, the Smithsonian Institution’s Feather Identification Laboratory receives about a dozen packages from around the country, each containing tissue swabs from bird/plane collisions. The lab’s scientists have dubbed this bloody goo “snarge,” and it is usually all that is left when bird meets plane. Scientists are analyzing snarge DNA to track airplane bird strikes, with the hope of decreasing hazardous collisions.’
But here’s the most interesting bit:
‘And its not just birds. Sometimes jet-stream encounters can take a page from the X-Files. “We’ve had frogs, turtles, snakes. We had a cat once that was struck at some high altitude,” said the Smithsonian’s Dove. She says birds like hawks and herons will occasionally drop their quarries into oncoming planes. “The other day we had a bird strike. We sent the sample to the DNA lab and it came back as rabbit. How do you explain to the FAA that we had a rabbit strike at 1,800 feet?”‘
Wired: Bird Plus Plane Equals Snarge
And then there’s human snarge »
i noticed some bird bits on my back fence. the hawks are messy eaters. where do i mail the remains?