How did feathers evolve?

Carl Zimmer, an elegant peacock among science writers, delivers this lesson on where bird feathers came from. The shared anatomy between dinosaurs and birds extends beyond the wishbone to their equally functional and extravagant plumage. Recent fossil finds give us hints about the colors and forms that adorned some prehistoric reptiles, from frilly crests to fuzzy proto-wings.

Dinosaurs didn’t take to the air for tens of millions of years after the first feathers showed up, and we don’t yet know exactly how that happened. But we know that the evolution of these delicate, beautiful and functional forms carried some dinosaurs aloft to a higher branch on the tree of life, and from that branch lept the first bird.

(view the full lesson at TED-Ed)

Source: ed.ted.com

Darwin’s Pigeons Meet The Genomic Age Like many naturalists of well-heeled social standing in his era, Charles Darwin was fond of keeping pigeons. While we now view these ashy sky-rats as something of an urban blight, there was then (and still is) an enormous group of breeding hobbyists worldwide. Bred for characteristics like frilled hoods and feathery spats (they really do look ridiculous), it’s these captive breeds that are believed to have escaped and become the feral urban populations of today. Even before Darwin’s famous finches of Galapagos, he viewed pigeon breeding as Nature’s power of genetic selection put in the hands of man. All of this decades before the idea of a gene, much less the DNA that a gene is made of, was born in the minds of scientists. More than a century and a half later, a team led by Utah’s Michael Shapiro has sequenced the genomes of 40 of these couture birds, to try and connect the age of Darwin with the age of the genome. It appears that all the world’s pigeons descend from one species, the rock pigeon of the Middle East. They flocked to man’s earliest farms in Mesopotamia, and were quickly domesticated for use as food, messengers and pets, a tradition which continues today. By digging down into the DNA base differences between various breeds, they hope to draw a map of pigeon evolution that would not only prove Darwin most definitely correct, but also make him quite happy. Carl Zimmer has the whole, wonderful pigeon tale at The New York Times. Oh, and one last tidbit: That frilly hood up there? It’s caused by a gene called EphB2 being turned on in a place it’s not supposed to be. The more you know … (pigeon photos via NY Times, by Richard Bailey)
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Darwin’s Pigeons Meet The Genomic Age Like many naturalists of well-heeled social standing in his era, Charles Darwin was fond of keeping pigeons. While we now view these ashy sky-rats as something of an urban blight, there was then (and still is) an enormous group of breeding hobbyists worldwide. Bred for characteristics like frilled hoods and feathery spats (they really do look ridiculous), it’s these captive breeds that are believed to have escaped and become the feral urban populations of today. Even before Darwin’s famous finches of Galapagos, he viewed pigeon breeding as Nature’s power of genetic selection put in the hands of man. All of this decades before the idea of a gene, much less the DNA that a gene is made of, was born in the minds of scientists. More than a century and a half later, a team led by Utah’s Michael Shapiro has sequenced the genomes of 40 of these couture birds, to try and connect the age of Darwin with the age of the genome. It appears that all the world’s pigeons descend from one species, the rock pigeon of the Middle East. They flocked to man’s earliest farms in Mesopotamia, and were quickly domesticated for use as food, messengers and pets, a tradition which continues today. By digging down into the DNA base differences between various breeds, they hope to draw a map of pigeon evolution that would not only prove Darwin most definitely correct, but also make him quite happy. Carl Zimmer has the whole, wonderful pigeon tale at The New York Times. Oh, and one last tidbit: That frilly hood up there? It’s caused by a gene called EphB2 being turned on in a place it’s not supposed to be. The more you know … (pigeon photos via NY Times, by Richard Bailey)
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Darwin’s Pigeons Meet The Genomic Age

Like many naturalists of well-heeled social standing in his era, Charles Darwin was fond of keeping pigeons. While we now view these ashy sky-rats as something of an urban blight, there was then (and still is) an enormous group of breeding hobbyists worldwide. Bred for characteristics like frilled hoods and feathery spats (they really do look ridiculous), it’s these captive breeds that are believed to have escaped and become the feral urban populations of today.

Even before Darwin’s famous finches of Galapagos, he viewed pigeon breeding as Nature’s power of genetic selection put in the hands of man. All of this decades before the idea of a gene, much less the DNA that a gene is made of, was born in the minds of scientists.

More than a century and a half later, a team led by Utah’s Michael Shapiro has sequenced the genomes of 40 of these couture birds, to try and connect the age of Darwin with the age of the genome. It appears that all the world’s pigeons descend from one species, the rock pigeon of the Middle East. They flocked to man’s earliest farms in Mesopotamia, and were quickly domesticated for use as food, messengers and pets, a tradition which continues today. By digging down into the DNA base differences between various breeds, they hope to draw a map of pigeon evolution that would not only prove Darwin most definitely correct, but also make him quite happy.

Carl Zimmer has the whole, wonderful pigeon tale at The New York Times. Oh, and one last tidbit: That frilly hood up there? It’s caused by a gene called EphB2 being turned on in a place it’s not supposed to be. The more you know …

(pigeon photos via NY Times, by Richard Bailey)

via wtfevolution: “Hey! Hey! I think I finally made something cute.” “Oh, yeah? Let’s see.” “It’s a ‘shoebill.’ It’s big and blue and adorable. Nice, right?” “It’s… hm. I don’t know. I like the blue, but something about those eyes is kind of creeping me out right now.” “What? Come on. Those are friendly eyes. It wants to be your friend.” “Okay. Okay, yeah. You’re right, evolution, I’m sorry. Should I feed it, maybe? What does it eat?” “Baby crocodiles.” “Oh Jesus Christ.” That smile belies the fact that it regularly tells the weaker of its pair of chicks “Sorry, you’ll have to go find food yourself, we like your bro/sis better. What’s that? You’re helpless? Can’t hear you la la la good luck!” I understand that that’s the way that the competition for resources cookie crumbles, but still. Not cool, smiley face.
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via wtfevolution:

“Hey! Hey! I think I finally made something cute.”

“Oh, yeah? Let’s see.”

“It’s a ‘shoebill.’ It’s big and blue and adorable. Nice, right?”

“It’s… hm. I don’t know. I like the blue, but something about those eyes is kind of creeping me out right now.”

“What? Come on. Those are friendly eyes. It wants to be your friend.”

“Okay. Okay, yeah. You’re right, evolution, I’m sorry. Should I feed it, maybe? What does it eat?”

“Baby crocodiles.”

“Oh Jesus Christ.”

That smile belies the fact that it regularly tells the weaker of its pair of chicks “Sorry, you’ll have to go find food yourself, we like your bro/sis better. What’s that? You’re helpless? Can’t hear you la la la good luck!”

I understand that that’s the way that the competition for resources cookie crumbles, but still. Not cool, smiley face.

The Adorable Biology of Snoring Hummingbirds

I think we’ve all felt like this on a Monday, right? This little hummingbird has just reserved a spot in my list of Top 10 Cutest Things I’ve Ever Seen, thanks to its snoozy little snore.

Of course, hummingbirds don’t really snore, do they? Maybe … sort of … but not for the same reasons we do. When humans (or my dogs) snore, it’s usually an obstruction l vibrating the back of the throat when we try to breathe in. Not that I ever snore or anything. So, this adorable little hummingbird is definitely sawing some logs, but the reason why is way cooler than the reasons we do.

Hummingbirds have incredibly high metabolic needs. To do all that buzzing around and to keep their tiny bodies warm, they eat the human equivalent of a refrigerator full of food every day, mostly in the form of high-energy nectar and fatty bugs. Because of their small size, they also lose a lot of body heat to the air. In order to preserve energy on cool nights, they have the ability to enter a daily, miniature hibernation called torpor.

Normally, if our bodies get cold, our muscles twitch (shivering) and we crank up our metabolism to create heat. That way we stay at our “set point” of 98.6˚F. In torpor, hummingbirds actually lower their bodies’ “set point”, powering down their brains and metabolism so far that their breathing is undetectable! This way, they aren’t burning calories on cold nights when they aren’t able to eat and recharge.

Just before morning, their natural circadian rhythms kick in and they start to thaw out, like heating a car engine on a cold day. What we see in the video is probably a bird coming out of torpor (which is what the scientists in the video were studying), starting to breathe in more oxygen to raise its body temperature, and making that adorable snoring noise.

Hummingbirds can do this on a daily basis if they get cold, regularly powering down on frozen tree branches around the world. Allegedly, you can even put them in the freezer for a while, but who would do such a thing?!

If only all science was this cute!

UPDATE: Sheri WIlliamson commented below that, from her extensive hummingbird experience, this may be the bird’s distress call as it comes out of torpor, aware of the researchers but too frozen to do anything about it.

Singing the Dinner Bell! Okay, this wave of “animals communicating in crazy ways” is getting a bit overwhelming. Just when I think I’ve heard about the coolest adaptations of animal “language”, I find something better. We’ve seen a whale mimicking human speech, an elephant (sort of) speaking Korean, and now this story about birds and secretly coded dinner passwords… The bird world is full of cuckoldry. That’s a crude word for the biological phenomenon called “brood parasitism”, where birds like cuckoos lay their eggs in the nests of other birds. The invaders are cared for by unsuspecting bird parents, who are apparently not smart enough to see that one of these things is very clearly not like the other. Finding food for screaming kids takes a lot of work, and it’s to a bird’s evolutionary advantage if they can focus on feeding their own offspring. The superb fairy wren (which is now so aptly named it’s not funny) developed a trick to solve that problem. They sing a song to their young. While they are still in their eggs. And after they hatch, the chicks have to incorporate that song into their feeding chirps to get the goods! It’s almost too awesome to be true! But it’s real science. Check out more over at Nature News, with a link there to the research paper and some of the bird songs. Very cool!
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Singing the Dinner Bell!

Okay, this wave of “animals communicating in crazy ways” is getting a bit overwhelming. Just when I think I’ve heard about the coolest adaptations of animal “language”, I find something better. We’ve seen a whale mimicking human speech, an elephant (sort of) speaking Korean, and now this story about birds and secretly coded dinner passwords…

The bird world is full of cuckoldry. That’s a crude word for the biological phenomenon called “brood parasitism”, where birds like cuckoos lay their eggs in the nests of other birds. The invaders are cared for by unsuspecting bird parents, who are apparently not smart enough to see that one of these things is very clearly not like the other.

Finding food for screaming kids takes a lot of work, and it’s to a bird’s evolutionary advantage if they can focus on feeding their own offspring. The superb fairy wren (which is now so aptly named it’s not funny) developed a trick to solve that problem.

They sing a song to their young. While they are still in their eggs. And after they hatch, the chicks have to incorporate that song into their feeding chirps to get the goods! It’s almost too awesome to be true!

But it’s real science. Check out more over at Nature News, with a link there to the research paper and some of the bird songs. Very cool!

Every Bird, In A Tree A team of evolutionary ornithologists (which is a field I really just made up, but hey, maybe it exists?) has drawn the first complete family tree for all known modern bird species. Not only is it a beautiful sight to gaze upon, but it demonstrates a new, important, and controversial idea about biodiversity.  It was thought that any given species would expand and diversify quickly into subspecies (like the many different kinds of honeybees), soon maxing out its environment and filling all the ecological “niches”. Then, competition over limited resources would thin that down to the few most adaptable species. This tree says the opposite, that birds are continuing to diversify even today, and fast. The center of this tree, anchoring branches built using fossil and DNA sequence data, reaches back nearly 50 million years, to the earliest days of birds branching off of dinosaurs. Despite the amazing story of avian evolution that this tree tells, it probably won’t help change Werner Herzog’s mind about chickens. (via Yale News; The full paper, in Nature, can be found here if you have access)
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Every Bird, In A Tree

A team of evolutionary ornithologists (which is a field I really just made up, but hey, maybe it exists?) has drawn the first complete family tree for all known modern bird species. Not only is it a beautiful sight to gaze upon, but it demonstrates a new, important, and controversial idea about biodiversity. 

It was thought that any given species would expand and diversify quickly into subspecies (like the many different kinds of honeybees), soon maxing out its environment and filling all the ecological “niches”. Then, competition over limited resources would thin that down to the few most adaptable species. This tree says the opposite, that birds are continuing to diversify even today, and fast.

The center of this tree, anchoring branches built using fossil and DNA sequence data, reaches back nearly 50 million years, to the earliest days of birds branching off of dinosaurs.

Despite the amazing story of avian evolution that this tree tells, it probably won’t help change Werner Herzog’s mind about chickens.

(via Yale News; The full paper, in Nature, can be found here if you have access)

Source: news.yale.edu

The Physics of How Bird Wings Work

Destin from Smarter Every Day explores one of those things we’ve all seen, but perhaps never fully understood. Just like the wing of an airplane, a bird’s wing (in this case a macaw) relies on creating higher pressure underneath than above the wing to create lift. You just will…not…believe…how they do it. That evolution refined such an intricate structure tens of millions of years ago, that’s enough wonder to last me the rest of the day.

You’ll never look at a bird the same way again.

(via Brain Pickings)

Source: brainpickings.org

Relating animal behaviors to human behaviors? Exercise caution.

Example:

Birds Hold Funerals For Their Dead, trying to draw the link between birds and humans at Discovery News:

The “funerals” therefore serve, at least in part, as a lesson. Since the birds don’t necessarily know what bumped off their feathered friend, they seem to focus more on the area, associating it temporarily with danger.

The researchers noted that the living birds tended to avoid foraging in the place where they found the deceased bird for a period of at least 24 hours.

Prior research suggests giraffes and elephants might also hold ceremonies for their dead. If so, perhaps there are shared factors with humans and birds. Solidifying group togetherness and social bonding appear to be key benefits, along with learning how to avoid (if possible) whatever did in the deceased.

See that bolded part? It’s not incorrect to say that both humans and birds are dependent on social bonding, but funerals serve the same purpose as birds gathered around their dead? Scratching my chin there. Then there’s this …

“Do Birds Hold Funerals?”, discussing whether the word is appropriate at NPR:

For instance, they presented the birds with a novel object made of wood, approximating the form of a dead scrub-jay, and some days later presented them instead with the actual skins (plus feathers) of dead jays. The birds never called or formed cacophonous aggregations in response to the wood object, but they always called at the skins, and almost always these callings escalated into noisy gatherings.

[…]

In other words, the birds tell each other about a dead companion, and so individually and collectively the scrub-jays may learn something about predation risks. By calling in others (the cacophonous aggregations), they may be more likely to drive a predator away or to warn relatives and mates of danger.

Where is the funeral promised in the title?

I know some people may think this is splitting hairs, but the way that a story like this is delivered, down to the words chosen to explain it, are crucial to what lesson gets taught. So birds gathering around the remains of their dead is important, biologically. In fact, it’s an awesome story on its own. It shows that evolution has provided them a way to learn from what killed their relatives, strengthening their social structure and improving their odds for survival. But does it have anything to do with the emotional, elaborately ceremonial funeral customs practiced by myriad human societies?

That idea’s dead on arrival.

Blub Blub Birdie

I remember when I was a kid, I thought I was hot stuff for diving down and touching the drain in the deep end of the pool. A few years later, I went snorkeling in the Florida Keys and reached the unimaginable depths of 20 feet! That’s nearly seven whole meters if you believe my story!

Cormorants make all that look like child’s play. Some species of marine birds can dive to depths exceeding 150 feet in search of fishy meals. By having a low body fat percentage and partially wetting feathers, they can dive deep with much less buoyancy.

These scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society attached a camera to the back of a cormorant as it dove 140 feet below the surface to catch a fish! So cool, and such an amazing evolutionary adaptation.

You know, because it’s not enough to be able to FLY.

Source: youtube.com