A paper published last year in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface described a feather as a masterpiece of engineering, one comprising nine orders of magnitude, from the nanoscale to the meter ...

Charles Darwin is most famous for his finches, from whose beaks he gleaned the idea that a single species might radiate into many. But he studied other attributes of birds, too—like the rhythmic ...

Feather mites are microscopic arthropods that inhabit the plumage and skin of birds, occupying specific microhabitats on their hosts. These mites exhibit extraordinary morphological diversity and host ...

More than 99% of birds can fly. But that still leaves many species that evolved to be flightless, including penguins, ostriches, and kiwi birds. In a new study in the journal Evolution, researchers ...

The Wright Brothers studied bird flight before they designed the first airplane. Now modern aircraft fly higher and faster than any bird, yet no manufactured device matches the graceful movements and ...

"The introductory chapters give a detailed overview of the feather - how feathers developed, the parts of a single feather, and the variety of types of feathers on a bird. In the feather ...

Researchers found that the iridescent shimmer that makes birds such as peacocks and hummingbirds so striking is rooted in an evolutionary tweak in feather nanostructure that has more than doubled the ...

Discover the clever ways birds survive winter, from sunbathing and feathery insulation to behavioral and metabolic tricks ...

Bird beaks have a variety of shapes and purposes. Here are common bird beak types you should look for and how they help birds ...