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1. Cuckoos are classified as belonging to their own order of birds, not closely related to other living birds. Only the weird hoatzin bird of the Amazon is distantly related to cuckoos. Cuckoos are most famous for their habit of brood parasitism. Only 2 out of 5 families of cuckoos comprise species that are brood par... |
15 May 2008
07:06 GMT |
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1. Gannets and boobies are coastal seabirds famous for their dive for fish. They have been thought to be related to the pelicans, but DNA analysis revealed that their closest relatives are the snakebirds and, more distantly, the cormorants. The oldest known relative of the gannet is the Odontopterix, which lived 50 ... |
12 May 2008
11:27 GMT |
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Owls are also called night raptors or night birds of prey. It's no wonder then thatthey have nothing to do with diurnal raptors (eagles, vultures, falcons and relatives), their closest relatives being the nightjars. 1. The largest living owl is the Eurasian eagle owl (Bubo bubo): 75 cm (2.5 ft) long, with a wing... |
7 May 2008
10:24 GMT |
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T-Rex is by far the most famous of dinosaur species. For 150 years, Tyrannosaurus rex was considered the largest carnivorous species that have ever roamed the earth. And it was, indeed, a huge beast - up to 12.8 (42 ft) in length and 7.2 tonnes in weight. Bigger than an elephant! Meanwhile, in 1993, a longer carnivor... |
7 May 2008
04:03 GMT |
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Diurnal raptors or birds of prey are represented by falcons, eagles, vultures of the Old World, buzzards, hawks, harriers and related species. The vultures of the New World (condors included) are not real raptors but stork-related birds. 1. Raptors evolved 75-36 Ma ago, from chicken-like birds. The main trait of thes... |
6 May 2008
11:02 GMT |
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1. The African ostrich (Struthio camelus) holds three records: it is the world's largest and fastest running living bird and lays the largest eggs. This bird can reach 160 kg (360 pounds) in weight and 2.75 m (9.2 ft) in height. Males are taller and heavier than females. Still, the African ostriches are not the ... |
6 May 2008
08:19 GMT |
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1. Since always, penguins have posed a huge issue for taxonomists. No one could say which group of living birds was closest to the penguins, because of their peculiar traits like the wing turned into a flipper and their oddly shaped feathers, which are uniform and resemble small stiff scales. For long, this made biol... |
5 May 2008
09:47 GMT |
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Earth's magnetic field is known to influence the behavior of living creatures, from bacteria to plants and animals. Fish (including sharks), whales, dolphins, bats, sea turtles and birds, many animal species are known to detect the magnetic field of the planet. A new research published in the Science journal has... |
5 May 2008
04:29 GMT |
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So far, China has provided us with a trove of dinosaur discoveries, including their evolutionary offshoot, the birds. Those fossils explain a lot of the evolution of the first birds. An impressively preserved new Chinese fossil bird fills a gap in this evolution. Eoconfuciusornis ("early Confuciusornis"), described i... |
5 May 2008
03:34 GMT |
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The ordinary lard is more than familiar to most of us. However, mammals also have a different fatty tissue called brown fat, involved in generating heat. A new study made at New York Medical College and published in the journal BMC Biology has discovered why birds lack this tissue. In the end, birds are actually livi... |
24 April 2008
02:44 GMT |
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1.Birds really have their "dialects", just like human languages. When researchers played to the birds from one population the recorded song of birds from other population, they remained indifferent to the voice of the same species if coming from another area, even if for the human ear, the songs of both populations s... |
23 April 2008
11:15 GMT |
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Bipedalism is a term coming from "walking on two feet" in Latin. Humans are practically the only bipedal mammals. Kangaroos and many rodent species hop on two feet but they cannot walk. When walking, they do it on all four. Other species, like apes, monkeys and bears, may attempt walking on two feet, but they do it o... |
17 April 2008
08:53 GMT |
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Danube Delta represents the largest wetland inside European Union. It is the nesting, stop or wintering place for over 300 species of birds, whose areal stretch from Africa and Asia, beyond the Polar Circle. This place harbors Europe's largest pelican colonies. Despite the fact that the place represents a Biosph... |
16 April 2008
09:26 GMT |
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The emergence of the human settlements during the Neolithic, 10,000 years ago, created a new biotope. In the new environment, not only domestic animals started to flourish, but also wild fauna that began to depend on human villages - and later cities - for shelter, food, and even security. And not all are useful. For... |
15 April 2008
10:11 GMT |
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The small Australian parrot called budgerigar (Melopsittacus undulatus) has turned into the most widespread cage bird worldwide. Here are some rules of dealing with these cute birds. 1. Remember that a budgerigar lives up to 12 years, a period when you have to take care of it. Remember that a wounded or sick bird req... |
8 April 2008
16:11 GMT |
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A protected area with multiple functions, Camargue Regional Park was created in 1970, in the department Bouches du Rhone, for protecting various bird species, wetland ecosystems and to find viable methods of exploiting the natural resources without degrading it. In 1990, the 85,000 hectares of the park were labeled a... |
7 April 2008
16:11 GMT |
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They are associated with the dark and with the myth of vampires (even if only 3 tropical American species consume blood, out of about 1,100 species). In fact, we know that most bats appreciate insects more than other foods. And two new researches published in the Science journal show us why bats control the annoyance... |
7 April 2008
02:54 GMT |
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It may seem silly: do pigeons represent a dangerous nuisance? The answer is: yes. Their dejections ruin monuments and statues. But it is more than that: they carry extremely virulent germs. Since Medieval Ages, the pigeons started to inhabit the European cities, where they easily found food in wastes discarded by hum... |
4 April 2008
09:25 GMT |
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Have you ever wondered which is the world's smallest feathered creature? It is, of course, a species of hummingbird. The Bee Hummingbird (Mellisuga helenae) inhabits Cuba (where people call it zunzuncito) and the Isle of Youth. The bird weighs 1.8 grams, having a length of about 5 cm (2 in). An unaware observer ... |
26 March 2008
10:26 GMT |
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When dinosaurs went extinct, the Neozoic (New life age) started. Life evolved towards what we experience today. 1. Paleogene (65-23 Ma) was the epoch when small mammals evolved to the high diversity we know today. Many groups perished without descendants. Birds and snakes, too, diversified greatly. The clime was some... |
17 March 2008
16:51 GMT |
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Today, only bats, birds and insects can fly. But birds detain the most records of animal flight, from speed to height. Some traits in bird anatomy represent their secret.1. Feathers evolved first for ensuring a body insulation and maintaining homeothermy (constant body temperature). Feathers can also make a "camoufla... |
17 March 2008
10:14 GMT |
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We know that some carnivorous (theropod) dinosaurs were feathered. Archaeopteryx, the oldest bird-dinosaur fossil discovered, was feathered, too. But the fossils preserved only imprints of feathers, as the feathers themselves degrade in time. However, this new discovery published in the journal "Proceedings of the R... |
12 March 2008
03:40 GMT |
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The oldest known bird, Archaeopteryx, lived 150 million years ago, but this species and its relatives can be hardly differentiated from dinosaurs. And for about 90 million years on, fossil birds had been toothed, being very different from the modern types. Fossils resembling modern birds started to appear around the ... |
6 February 2008
03:25 GMT |
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Emu (Dromicaeus novaehollandiea) is represented on the emblem of Australia, being one of the Australians that cannot walk in "marche-arriere". This relative of the African ostrich can be 2 m (6.6 ft) tall (the second tallest living bird after the African ostrich) and weigh 35-50 kg (75-110 pounds), a third place amon... |
1 February 2008
14:06 GMT |
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Birds are the only living dinosaurs, and the transition from hatchling to adult appears to be like a transition from flightless dinosaurs to flying dinosaurs. A new research published in "Nature" reveals how young birds must control the wing angles in order to achieve flying.The team led by Kenneth Dial of the Univer... |
25 January 2008
03:14 GMT |
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1.The 90-350 pellets of a cartridge leave the gun pipe with a speed of about 240 m (800 ft) per second, stringing at a distance of 30-35 m (100-118 ft) from the gun on a length of 3.2 m (11 ft). 2.The time period between the passing of the first and the last pellet of a shot, at a distance of 30 m (100 ft) from the g... |
7 January 2008
06:20 GMT |
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65 % of the bird species migrate. Some species make very short displacements during winter, like the Finnish rooks which spend the winter in Northern Germany, displacing themselves with just 50 km (30 mi) daily.The longest migration made by any bird is that effectuated by the Arctic tern (Sterna paradisaea), which ne... |
20 December 2007
09:38 GMT |
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The oil spill wipes out life on its way; the tidal areas are depleted of life. A large array of sea species, from marine mammals (cetaceans, seals, otters) to sea birds, turtles, fish, crustaceans, and mollusks lose their habitat. The petroleum attacks directly the animals and plants, both physically and chemically. ... |
12 December 2007
07:02 GMT |
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1.Numerous studies showed that the love for your pets can improve your health. It decreases stress, the number of visits to the doctor's, and even increases the survival chances in case of heart attack. A pet can help stroke patients to recover and psychiatric patients to hold on their anxiety. Pets appease peop... |
3 December 2007
14:06 GMT |
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Swifts are amongst the fastest birds, and even if they resemble swallows, they are in fact related to hummingbirds. A swift weighs a few tens of grams, but with its sickle shaped wings they can reach 160 km (100 mi) per hour. Swifts are the birds the term aerial suits best as they catch food (insects), eat, drink, co... |
1 December 2007
07:06 GMT |
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The spring, when nature blooms, pollen is everywhere in the air. It is the curse for the allergic people, experiencing the "hay fever". But what's the pollen? The product of the male part of the flowers (stamins), in other words, plant sperm. For a plant to reproduce, the pollen must reach the pistil on the fema... |
27 November 2007
11:00 GMT |
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1.Costa Rica is a small country from Central America having 4 million inhabitants and is slightly larger than Switzerland. The land was discovered in 1502 by Columbus, who was taken by surprise with his whole fleet by a storm in the waters off the neighboring Honduras. Columbus navigated along the shores of present-d... |
27 November 2007
08:26 GMT |
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1.The raven is the largest bird of the crow family: it is twice heavier than a common crow at 1.3 kg (3 pounds), being 60 cm (two feet) long, with a wingspan of almost 1 m (3.3 ft). Ravens can live 40 years in the wild and 70 in captivity. 2.Ravens can soar high above the trees, unlike crows, which rely on active fli... |
14 November 2007
17:44 GMT |
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Bird flight has fascinated humans since ever. And by over 150 years, with the discovery of the oldest bird, Archaeopteryx, a vivid debate divides scientists into two camps: those who say birds evolved from ground-dwelling ancestors and developed flight by taking off from the ground and those saying that birds evolved... |
8 November 2007
07:11 GMT |
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Only few doubt that birds are just living dinosaurs. Besides clues like feathers and similar bones, a new research comes with novel proofs that dinosaurs did resemble birds. The researchers at the University of Manchester point in their article published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences ... |
7 November 2007
06:06 GMT |
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Being birdbrained can sometimes suggest sheer intelligence. In lab tests, the New Caledonian crow outperformed even apes. But new ultralight video cameras attached to their tail feathers allowed the researchers to follow the behavior of the highly intelligent tool-users in the wild. The first-of-its-kind research dis... |
5 October 2007
05:19 GMT |
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If you had walked the Earth 150 to 65 million years ago, the birds would have seemed very strange to you. First, they all displayed a mouth full of fearsome teeth. Too few flew, and many had well developed arms, with a lizard-like tail covered by feathers. In fact, all these strange birds were not birds at all, but d... |
3 October 2007
17:11 GMT |
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Bird flue virus is regarded as a major global threat to human health: H5N1 has severely affected the poultry industry in many countries and even if it has killed a little more than 200 human victims, the death rates are high. But fear comes especially from a possible mutation or hybridization with common human flu vi... |
28 September 2007
05:31 GMT |
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Without a map or GPS, we are completely lost in the middle of nowhere. But many species, such as the mole rat, birds, fish, amphibian, have a magnetic compass. Bats have it too, and a new research shows how these mammals can feel the polarity of a magnetic field, detecting the difference between north and south. This... |
24 September 2007
06:49 GMT |
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Birds are dinosaurs; or is it…some dinosaurs were in fact birds? It's quite difficult to answer this question, but what's certain is that many carnivorous dinosaurs were feathered. Some of the feathered dinosaurs were even as big as a rhino. However, few dino fossils discovered up to now were feathered. A n... |
21 September 2007
06:47 GMT |
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Birds are considered dwarf flying dinosaurs. Now, an 80-million-year-old recently found dwarf dinosaur in the southern Gobi desert (Mongolia) could be a missing link in the evolutionary question of how the tiny birds evolved from the huge beasts. The new feathered dinosaur, called Mahakala (after a Tibetan god) omnog... |
7 September 2007
02:49 GMT |
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That was the greatest ecological disaster on the sea: in 1978 the tanker "Amoco-Cadiz" contaminated with 280,000 tonnes of crude oil the coasts off Bretagne (Western France). More "famous" is the ecological catastrophe produced by Exon Valdez in 1989 on Alaska's shores. During the 1991 Gulf War, about one millio... |
30 August 2007
14:31 GMT |
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All vertebrates sleep, from fish to mammals. And even some invertebrates, like the insects. During sleep, the body enters in a predominantly anabolic phase, when it develops, grows, heals and builds muscle; the immune system is at its peak (that's why, when we're ill, we wake up without the cold). The lack ... |
22 August 2007
13:36 GMT |
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Insecticides turn you impotent rather than rousing you, but not the same occurs with the crested auklets and their home made bug killing chemicals. These arctic sea birds have been found to produce citrus-scented pheromones that repel ticks while at the same time attracting mates. This finding explains the long-stand... |
22 August 2007
06:00 GMT |
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Having a bird's brain cannot be bad at all. The New Caledonian crow is already known for its ability to use and craft tools, but a new research shows that the birds' cognitive skills could surpass the monkeys'. The bird, endemic to New Caledonia (northeast of Australia) employs sticks in the wild to fi... |
17 August 2007
05:21 GMT |
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The top speed for airplanes could be limited by physical rules of aerodynamics, but the birds' flight is much more complex, breaking those rules. Many think that the fastest speeds at which the smallest insects and the largest aircraft can fly are strongly connected to their weight and their wingspan. A team led... |
17 July 2007
04:32 GMT |
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In the case of many species, individuals have an innate sense of direction, following their way along migration routes that go by thousands of miles and in most of those species, Earth's magnetic field is used for orientation or navigation during long migrations. This is valid for more living creatures: from bee... |
12 July 2007
06:38 GMT |
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What's the connection between a nuclear explosion and a bird's feathers? Well, the brighter the bird, the more exposed it is to radiation, as found by a new research examining bird populations around the 1986 nuclear disaster zone at Chernobyl, Ukraine. The same compounds that many birds employ to give colo... |
12 July 2007
03:27 GMT |
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This is the largest flying bird ever: Argentavis magnificens, having a wingspan up to 8.3 m (28 ft) and weighing up 100 kg (220 pounds). This bird resembles a condor and was somehow related with the condors and the ... storks! It inhabited the pampas of Argentina about five million years ago. Now, researchers investi... |
3 July 2007
05:03 GMT |
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We could say that nightingale's trills are connected to stuttering. A team at the Methodist Neurological Institute (NI) in Houston and Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City which employed functional MRI has reached such a conclusion. The researchers looked for the first time within the brain of an awake... |
12 June 2007
04:22 GMT |
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