Whether they’re opening for takeoff, spreading wide for a lazy soar or flapping to brake for landing, bird wings make flying look almost effortless.

If you took a careful look at the feathers on a chicken, you'd find many different forms within the same bird -- even within a single feather. The diversity of feather shapes and functions expands ...

Birds of a feather may flock together, but the feathers of birds differ altogether. New research from an international team led by USC scientists set out to learn how feathers developed and helped ...

"Most previous studies suggest that insulation might have been the primary function for the first feathers, but our discovery supports that display represents one of the earliest functions for ...

When we think of birds, the mind immediately turns to flight. That birds can fly and have adapted to a life of flying the world over is miraculous. Much of what allows the Aves taxonomic class to take ...

CHARLESTON, SC (WCIV) — Certain dinosaurs, and ultimately modern birds, likely developed the ability to fly because bigger, flashier feathers are simply sexier. That conclusion is strongly supported ...

It was the absence of feathers that got conservation biologist Thor Hanson thinking about the significance of them. Hanson was in Kenya studying the feeding habits of vultures, and he noticed the ...