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Birds (flying, soaring) – Most of the approximately 10,000 living species can fly (flightless birds are the exception). Bird flight is one of the most studied forms of aerial locomotion in animals. See List of soaring birds for birds that can soar as well as fly. Townsends's big-eared bat, (Corynorhinus townsendii) displaying the "hand wing"
The recurrent evolution of flight is a classic example, as flying insects, birds, pterosaurs, and bats have independently evolved the useful capacity of flight. Functionally similar features that have arisen through convergent evolution are analogous, whereas homologous structures or traits have a common origin but can have dissimilar functions.
Ornithischian (bird-hipped) dinosaurs had a pelvis shape similar to that of birds, or avian dinosaurs, which evolved from saurischian (lizard-hipped) dinosaurs. [69] The Heterodontosauridae evolved a tibiotarsus which is also found in modern birds. These groups are not closely related. [70] Ankylosaurs and glyptodont mammals both had spiked ...
Hummingbirds and sunbirds, two nectarivorous bird lineages in the New and Old Worlds have parallelly evolved a suite of specialized behavioral and anatomical traits. These traits (bill shape, digestive enzymes, and flight) allow the birds to optimally fit the flower-feeding-and-pollination ecological niche they occupy, which is shaped by the birds' suites of parallel traits.
Avialae is also occasionally defined as an apomorphy-based clade (that is, one based on derived characteristics that were not present among lineage predecessors). Jacques Gauthier , who named Avialae in 1986, re-defined it in 2001 as all dinosaurs that possessed feathered wings used in flapping flight , and the birds that descended from them.
Bird flight is the primary mode of locomotion used by most bird species in which birds take off and fly. Flight assists birds with feeding, breeding , avoiding predators , and migrating . Bird flight includes multiple types of motion, including hovering, taking off, and landing, involving many complex movements.
These traits add extra weight to the bird, making it harder to fly. The world record for the longest chicken flight is 13 seconds with a distance of over 300 feet . How long do chickens live?
It differs from divergent evolution as the species involved do not descend from a closely related common ancestor and the traits accumulated are similar. [4] An example of convergent evolution is the development of flight in birds, bats, and insects, all of which are not closely related but share analogous structures allowing for flight. [8]