Modern birds capable of flight all have a specialized wing structure called the propatagium without which they could not fly. The evolutionary origin of this structure has remained a mystery, but new ...

Bird physiology is conducive to flight: small size, hollow bones, and generally symmetrical feathers on the wings and tail. It seems like a no-brainer that bird evolution was optimized for flight, but ...

You can know a lot of things about birds just by the shape of their wings. A seafaring albatross, stretching out its sail-like airfoils, lives a very different life from a ground-dwelling antpitta ...

Nature is full of incredible survival strategies, and some birds have developed remarkable adaptations that act as built-in weapons in their wings. These features help them defend themselves, compete ...

Even the giant wings of the albatross are not ‘optimally’ shaped for their extraordinary long-distance migrations, according to new University of Bristol research. The study, published in Nature ...

Bird wing shape -- a proxy for long-distance flying ability, or dispersal -- is a trait that influences biodiversity patterns on islands around the world, according to biologists. You can know a lot ...

The path to flight in modern birds was full of forks, twists and dead ends. Erin Malsbury Tens of millions of years of bird evolution guided some of the most important elements of human-powered flight ...

Insight into bird flight sheds light on the animals’ evolution and provides design inspiration for engineering. Writing in Nature, Harvey et al. 1 report findings that deepen our understanding of some ...