how good are yinglets at swimming? zhey are supposed to go in zhe water for clams and stuff, but how well could zhey actually swim? i assume it must be decent enough?
actually, would zhey snake in zhe water? wiggling for propulsion?
They have zero body fat, hydrophilic fur, and tiny lungs. Most of them sink faster than rocks. Easier to dig up clams on the shore.
hydroPHILic? just toss zhem in zhe water, and zhey inflate like a beachball as zhey absorb all zhe water? i know people into zhat...and yes, i know what you meant. actually cutting zhrough zhe water wizh hydrophobic fur, just ignoring its presence is a funny image to me as well
also, zero body fat? did you forget about poak?
i might need to look into how much bouyant force you can get out of a given volume of lungs...because zhey may have small lungs, but also small bodies! maybe it evens out!
well
for neutral buoyancy, the positive buoyancy from lung volume has to be equal to the negative buoyancy of the non-lung body volume
call the lung volume fraction x, rho_air is air density, rho_water water density, and rho_body body density
the neutral buoyancy condition then becomes x*(rho_water-rho_air)=(1-x)*(rho_body-rho_water), assuming rho_body>rho_water>rho_air
rearrange, and you get x=(rho_water-rho_body)/(rho_air-rho_body)
assume rho_water=1030 kg/m^3 (sea water), rho_body=1050 kg/m^3 (density of a human with 20% body fat), rho_air=1.11 kg/m^3 (saturated air at 37 C and 1 atm), x=0.019
if we assume a body density of 1100 kg/m^3, x=0.064
with 1000 kg/m^3 fresh water, the values become x=0.048 and x=0.091 respectively
in a healthy adult human, fully inflated lungs can easily reach something between 5% and 7.5% of the body volume I think
conclusion: depending on just how lean yinglets are, and how low-density their pneumatised bones are, floating in salt water should be somewhere between easy and doable, and floating in fresh water somewhere between doable and impossible