Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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.
Weight is the largest obstacle birds must overcome in order to fly. An animal can more easily attain flight by reducing its absolute weight. Birds evolved from other theropod dinosaurs that had already gone through a phase of size reduction during the Middle Jurassic, combined with rapid evolutionary changes. [3]
Eurasian cranes in a V formation (video) Birds flying in V formation. A V formation is a symmetric V- or chevron-shaped flight formation.In nature, it occurs among geese, swans, ducks, and other migratory birds, improving their energy efficiency, while in human aviation, it is used mostly in military aviation, air shows, and occasionally commercial aviation.
As colorful as birds are to the human eye, we’re actually “colorblind with respect to birds,” Prum said. That’s because birds see an even wider gamut of colors than humans can.
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"
Birds are the only living vertebrates to have fused collarbones and a keeled breastbone. [17] The keeled sternum serves as an attachment site for the muscles used in flying or swimming. [17] Flightless birds, such as ostriches, lack a keeled sternum and have denser and heavier bones compared to birds that fly. [18]
High-speed wings are short, pointed wings that when combined with a heavy wing loading and rapid wingbeats provide an energetically expensive, but high-speed flight. This type of wing is present in fast-flying birds such as ducks. Birds that use their wings to "fly" underwater such as the auks also have small and elongated wings.
The furcula (Latin for "little fork"; pl.: furculae) [a] or wishbone is a forked bone found in most birds and some species of non-avian dinosaurs, and is formed by the fusion of the two clavicles. [1] In birds, its primary function is in the strengthening of the thoracic skeleton to withstand the rigors of flight.