What Manja Actually Does to a Wing
Glass-coated manja is abrasive wire designed to cut a rival's kite string. At the speeds a black kite flies, up to 50 km/h in a glide, contact with a taut strand of manja acts less like a cut and more like a saw. The wire drags across the patagium, the thin membrane of skin that stretches from shoulder to wrist on a bird's wing, and through the flight feathers at the leading edge. The patagium is densely supplied with blood vessels and has almost no fat layer beneath it. A clean manja laceration bleeds heavily and fast.
