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A dragonfly in its radical final moult, metamorphosing from an aquatic nymph to a winged adult.. In biology, moulting (British English), or molting (American English), also known as sloughing, shedding, or in many invertebrates, ecdysis, is a process by which an animal casts off parts of its body to serve some beneficial purpose, either at specific times of the year, or at specific points in ...
When preening, a bird (such as this red lory) draws individual feathers through its beak, realigning and re-interlocking the barbules.. Preening is a maintenance behaviour found in birds that involves the use of the beak to position feathers, interlock feather barbules that have become separated, clean plumage, and keep ectoparasites in check.
Mountain goats molt in spring by rubbing against rocks and trees, with the adult billies shedding their extra wool first and the pregnant nannies shedding last. Their coats help them to withstand winter temperatures as low as −46 °C (−51 °F) and winds of up to 160 kilometres per hour (99 mph).
Harbor seals must spend a great deal of time on shore when molting, which occurs shortly after breeding. This onshore time is important to the life cycle, and can be disturbed when substantial human presence occurs. [36] The timing of onset of molt depends on the age and sex of the animal, with yearlings molting first and adult males last. [37]
The snowy owl (Bubo scandiacus), [4] also known as the polar owl, the white owl and the Arctic owl, [5] is a large, white owl of the true owl family. [6] Snowy owls are native to the Arctic regions of both North America and the Palearctic, breeding mostly on the tundra. [2]
A new analysis of three-toed fossil footprints that date back more than 210 million years reveals that they were created by bipedal reptiles with feet like a bird’s.
Feather development occurs in the epidermal layer of the skin in birds.It is a complicated process involving many steps. Once the feathers are fully developed, there are six different types of feathers: contour, flight, down, filoplumes, semiplumes, and bristle feathers.
Animals caught in terrestrial mudflows are subject to involuntary locomotion; this may be beneficial to the distribution of species with limited locomotive range under their own power. There is less opportunity for passive locomotion on land than by sea or air, though parasitism (hitchhiking) is available toward this end, as in all other habitats.