A paper published last year in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface described a feather as a masterpiece of engineering ...

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 ...

Birds are some of the most striking creatures on Earth, coming in a rainbow of colors that serve several important functions, such as attracting a mate and communicating with other birds. These ...

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 ...

Female tanager birds dig flamboyant males. So to build plumage that really pops with orange or red or yellow, a male has to eat fruits and absorb their carotenoids. The fancy feathers he produces then ...

A study of nearly all of the 10,000 or so bird species has found that the further birds migrate, the paler their feathers tend to be. This is probably because it helps birds flying in sunlight to keep ...

Feathers are a sleek, intricate evolutionary innovation that makes flight possible for birds, but in addition to their stiff, aerodynamic feathers used for flight, birds also keep a layer of soft, ...