Experiments and analysis of cormorants' density, wing loading and webbed feet loading

This paper conducted two biological observation experiments on cormorants, whose data concerns cormorants' weight, volume, area of webbed feet and area of their wings, and other data on density, wing loading and webbed feet loading is calculated as well. The average density is 0.738g/cm
³
, the average wing loading is 1.58 g/cm
²
and the average webbed feet loading is 25.3 g/cm
²
. The flight performance of cormorants is negatively correlated to the wing loading, and the ability of underwater locomotion and fishing capacity are closely relative to the webbed feet loading. Furthermore, the average webbed feet loading of cormorants is an order of magnitude larger than the wing loading, which indicates that respectively designing corresponding propulsion systems of aquatic unmanned aerial vehicles (AquaUAV) in both water and air is essential and significant, including geometry, dimensions, kinematics, and the rated thrust power, etc. These conclusions are useful for the development of AquaUAV.