Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Bird anatomy, or the physiological structure of birds' bodies, shows many unique adaptations, mostly aiding flight.Birds have a light skeletal system and light but powerful musculature which, along with circulatory and respiratory systems capable of very high metabolic rates and oxygen supply, permit the bird to fly.
The avian brain is the central organ of the nervous system in birds. Birds possess large, complex brains, which process, integrate, and coordinate information received from the environment and make decisions on how to respond with the rest of the body. Like in all chordates, the avian brain is contained within the skull bones of the head.
The archosaurian shift from larynx to syrinx must have conferred a selective advantage for crown birds, but the causes for this shift remain unknown. [10] To complicate matters, the syrinx falls into an unusual category of functional evolution: arising from ancestors with a larynx-based sound source, the syrinx contains significant functional overlap with the structure it replaced.
In the neuroanatomy of animals, an avian pallium is the dorsal telencephalon of a bird's brain. The subpallium is the ventral telencephalon. The pallium of avian species tends to be relatively large, comprising ~75% of the telencephalic volume. Birds have a unique pallial structure known as the hyperpallium, once called the hyperstriatum.
Skull in situ Human head skull from side Anatomy of a flat bone – the periosteum of the neurocranium is known as the pericranium Human skull from the front Side bones of skull. The human skull is the bone structure that forms the head in the human skeleton. It supports the structures of the face and forms a cavity for the brain. Like the ...
In birds, it is an enlargement of the bones of the upper mandible or the skull, either on the front of the face, or the top of the head, or both. The casque has been hypothesized to serve as a visual cue to a bird's sex, state of maturity, or social status; as reinforcement to the beak's structure; or as a resonance chamber, enhancing calls. [4]
Birds and modern crocodilians have evolved a trifurcated columella, which forms a Y-shaped support structure on the surface of the tympanic membrane. [7] In birds, this is thought to increase the surface area of the columellar footplate, thus lowering the threshold of hearing and improving the detection of airborne sound waves. [7] [3]
Birds (class Aves) – winged, bipedal, endothermic (warm-blooded), egg-laying, vertebrate animals. There are around 10,000 living species, making them the most varied of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic, to the Antarctic.