Related topics: birds

Baby birds hatch with ability to mimic mom

Singing a gentle lullaby can help put a human baby to sleep but its usefulness in the low grassland swaying nests of Australian songbirds takes maternal 'singing' to even greater heights.

Nestling birds recognize their local song 'dialect'

A recent study, published in Current Biology, led by researchers at Stockholm University and Uppsala University, has shown that juvenile songbirds react to hearing the songs they will eventually produce as adults, even when ...

Climate warming damages DNA of endangered songbirds

Extreme heat waves can cause birds and mammals to die en masse. But it's more common for an animal to experience relatively mild heat stress that doesn't kill it. Our new findings suggest that unfortunately, these individuals ...

How landscapes of fear affect the songbirds in our backyards

A team of researchers headquartered at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has recently discovered that fear plays an important, unrecognized role in the underdevelopment, and increased vulnerability, of backyard songbirds.

When fathers go missing, female songbirds take up the slack

A new study of a migratory songbird shows that when fathers abandon late-season nests during flight-feather molt, the nestlings suffer no ill effects; deserted females effectively double their maternal efforts and completely ...

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Bird

Birds (class Aves) are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic (warm-blooded), egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from the 5 cm (2 in) Bee Hummingbird to the 2.75 m (9 ft) Ostrich. The fossil record indicates that birds evolved from theropod dinosaurs during the Jurassic period, around 160 million years (Ma) ago. Paleontologists regard birds as the only clade of dinosaurs to have survived the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event 65.5 Ma ago.

Modern birds are characterised by feathers, a beak with no teeth, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a lightweight but strong skeleton. All living species of birds have wings—the now extinct flightless Moa of New Zealand was the only exception. Wings are evolved forelimbs, and most bird species can fly, with some exceptions, including ratites, penguins, and a number of diverse endemic island species. Birds also have unique digestive and respiratory systems that are highly adapted for flight. Some birds, especially corvids and parrots, are among the most intelligent animal species; a number of bird species have been observed manufacturing and using tools, and many social species exhibit cultural transmission of knowledge across generations.

Many species undertake long distance annual migrations, and many more perform shorter irregular movements. Birds are social; they communicate using visual signals and through calls and songs, and participate in social behaviours, including cooperative breeding and hunting, flocking, and mobbing of predators. The vast majority of bird species are socially monogamous, usually for one breeding season at a time, sometimes for years, but rarely for life. Other species have polygynous ("many females") or, rarely, polyandrous ("many males") breeding systems. Eggs are usually laid in a nest and incubated by the parents. Most birds have an extended period of parental care after hatching.

Many species are of economic importance, mostly as sources of food acquired through hunting or farming. Some species, particularly songbirds and parrots, are popular as pets. Other uses include the harvesting of guano (droppings) for use as a fertiliser. Birds figure prominently in all aspects of human culture from religion to poetry to popular music. About 120–130 species have become extinct as a result of human activity since the 17th century, and hundreds more before then. Currently about 1,200 species of birds are threatened with extinction by human activities, though efforts are underway to protect them.

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA