Animals, features and articles | Educational Science

Sep 30, 2022

What's the fastest airborne animal?

The cheetah is well-known for being the fastest creature on land, but the animal kingdom is not limited to Earth's surface. What is the fastest flying animal? And what biological features enable its speed? Nature's swiftest jet-setter is the peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus). Peregrinus is the Latin word for traveler,...

Oct 14, 2022

Flap Flop: Earth's First Bird Not a Bird After All

The legendary winged creature long known as the earliest bird, Archaeopteryx, might have just been dethroned, scientists reveal. Instead, a newfound fossil from China suggests Archaeopteryx was not a bird after all, but one of many birdlike dinosaurs, a finding that could force scientists to rethink much of what they...

Nov 3, 2022

Juvenile bird accidentally breaks record for longest non-stop flight on its first attempt

A juvenile bird recently broke the world record for the longest continuous bird flight on its very first long-haul journey across the Pacific, after the youngster got mixed up and accidentally landed in the wrong place. The bar-tailed godwit (Limosa lapponica), known simply by its satellite tag number 234684, flew...

Nov 9, 2022

Crows outthink monkeys, can grasp recursive patterns

Crows are notoriously clever — the songbirds can use tools, understand the concept of zero and follow basic analogies. Now, a new study suggests that their grasp of one complex cognitive principle in particular is better than that of monkeys and comparable to that of small children. Researchers found that...

Nov 23, 2022

10 terrific turkey facts

(Image credit: Jeff Banke | shutterstock)Turkey sandwiches are gobbled up year-round, but during Thanksgiving, the wattled bird is the star attraction on the dinner table. But there's more to turkeys than meets the eye. Like all birds, the turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) is a living dinosaur, meaning its related to Tyrannosaurus...

Dec 8, 2022

Oddly modern skull raises new questions about the early evolution of birds

The earliest birds on Earth may have been more modern-looking than scientists expected — a discovery that raises new questions about a murky period in evolutionary history. The first birds diverged from two-legged theropod dinosaurs around 165 million to 150 million years ago, during the Jurassic period, according to a...

Jan 19, 2023

Domesticated chickens could wipe out their wild ancestors — by having sex with them

Red junglefowl are under threat from domesticated chickens that want to mate with them, a new study shows. These wild birds, the ancestors of domesticated chickens, risk losing their genetic diversity because they are breeding with farmed chickens that putter around their natural habitat. If this crossbreeding continues, it could...

Feb 10, 2023

Cockatoos join humans and chimps as only species that can use a set of tools

Cockatoos can combine multiple tools to complete a complex task, a feat scientists previously thought only chimpanzees and humans could do, a new study reveals. Tool use has been observed in a handful of animals including chimps, gorillas, orangutans, sea otters, dolphins, octopuses and crows, as well as some cockatoos....

Feb 13, 2023

Do birds pee?

Dogs lift their legs. Cats use a litter box. And birds do their business just about everywhere. But is this whitish-colored splat only bird poop? What about bird pee? Their pee doesn't look like ours, said Sushma Reddy, an associate professor of ornithology at the University of Minnesota. It's not...

Apr 7, 2023

6 incredible egg facts, just in time for Easter

Every spring, colorful eggs show up in Easter egg hunts, and hard-boiled eggs grace Seder plates at Passover. But besides serving as an oval canvas for egg decorators and a symbol of rebirth and fertility, avian eggs are known for their diversity in shape and size. For instance, kiwi eggs...

Apr 30, 2023

Taxidermy birds are being turned into drones

Dead birds are getting a second chance at flying by being transformed into drones. Researchers think that by creating avian drones using taxidermy birds, they can not only learn about flight but eventually use the drones to monitor wildlife. I originally got the idea to do this in 2011, but...

May 9, 2023

Scientists discovered a 2,200-year-old condor poop pile in the Andes. Here's what it told them.

For the past 2,200 years, Andean condors (Vultur gryphus), among the largest known flying birds in the world, have been nesting — and pooping — at a cliffside grotto in northern Patagonia, Argentina. Now researchers are studying the massive pile of guano to learn more about the threatened species and...

May 26, 2023

Scientists changed scales on chicken feet to feathers by tweaking a single gene

By tweaking a specific gene, scientists have discovered a way to permanently transform the scales on a chicken's feet into feathers. The results provide new insight into the bird's evolutionary origins from dinosaurs. Like birds, it's clear today that many dinosaurs were partially covered with feathers as well as scales,...

Jun 27, 2023

Adult albatrosses found gnawed to death by mice on 3rd remote island

Adult albatrosses on a remote island are being attacked and eaten by an aggressive invasive species — mice. Invasive mice have been wreaking havoc on the ecosystem of Marion Island — located about halfway between South Africa and Antarctica — for decades, chowing down on native invertebrates and the chicks...

Aug 25, 2023

Animal sex: How birds do it

Sure, birds can fly, but do they have sex? Can they do it in the air? And where do they keep their reproductive organs? To understand how birds have sex, it is necessary to move beyond preconceived ideas of how other animals have sex — particularly mammals. Birds and mammals...