SCIENCE IN THE NEWS DAILY
Bird "Sings" Through Feathers
from National Geographic News
Solving a longstanding puzzle among bird experts, scientists have found that the sharp, violin-like sounds of a South American songbird come not from the beak but from a suite of specially evolved, vibrating feathers.
A new study offers the first hard evidence that birds use feathers for audible communication as well as for flight and warmth.
In 2005 Kimberly Bostwick theorized that the male club-winged manakin--a tiny bird of the Andean cloud forest--was vibrating a club-shaped wing feather against a neighboring, ridged feather to "sing" when trying to attract females. Proving the feather-song connection, though, would be a huge challenge.
Read more...
Science in the Media
Newspapers:
Magazines and Web Sites:
The Science-Media Intersection:
Subscribe to Our Content!
Visit our RSS Feeds page to choose among 13 customized feeds, or create a free My AmSci account to request an email notice whenever a specified author, department or discipline appears online.