Smithsonian researcher Klara Widrig studies living birds to build 3D models of their ancestors’ anatomies, uncovering how ...

Watching a bird soar into the sky may seem ordinary. Yet behind this aerial ballet lies precise mechanics where every wingbeat obeys the laws of aerodynamics. Birds don't fly by chance: they ...

How do birds of prey fly? They have special adaptations that allow them to take off quickly, fly fast and soar for hours. What would it take for us to fly like that? Science Trek is available to ...

The closest living relatives of crocodiles and alligators are, perhaps surprisingly, birds. They are both archosauriforms, a group of species that originated about 250 million years ago near the ...

Some birds migrate thousands of miles every autumn. How exactly do they manage it? Scientists built a flight chamber to find out. Some birds migrate thousands of miles every autumn. How exactly do ...

Birds today make flight look effortless, but its evolution was complex. Scientists are still trying to discover exactly how birds took to the skies, and today, a new perspective has emerged by ...

As rising global temperatures alter ecosystems worldwide, animal species usually have two choices: adapt to changing local conditions or flee to a cooler climate. Ecologists have long assumed that the ...

“How do you make a hinge? Look at a fruit fly.” Princeton’s Bio-Inspired Adaptive Morphology (BAM) Laboratory, headed by Assistant Professor in the Mechanical Science and Engineering Department Aimy ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about biodiversity and the hidden quirks of the natural world. Migratory birds are some of nature’s most efficient ...