The ecological importance of surface tension

Surface tension allows small animals to walk on water from rivers or ponds. Live, these animals serve as food for numerous species of fish.

Similarly, birds that sail the waters of the lakes, as ducks rely surface tension to increase the volume of water displaced by your body and float more easily. For this, they bristle at the chest down. Due to surface tension and small adhesion force of the water with feathers and down, water can not penetrate between the feathers and fluff. Thus, the volume displaced by the bird is much larger than the volume of his body, which facilitates fluctuation.

The pollution of water with detergent can reduce by one third the value of the surface tension, causing small animals and die sinking, cutting fish food, and still allow the penetration of water in the fluff of birds, making it difficult to float . Moreover, unlike water than "wet" the feathers of birds thanks to reduced adhesion force between the water and the feathers and down, the oil has strong adhesion force. Therefore, the oil spill in the sea caused by oil causes so much damage to seabirds; the oil soaks and kills.