(CN) — In a new study, researchers say soaring birds like eagles, vultures and falcons that can glide effortlessly by flapping their wings only occasionally have evolved to use their lungs to aid in ...

The Wright Brothers studied bird flight before they designed the first airplane. Now modern aircraft fly higher and faster than any bird, yet no manufactured device matches the graceful movements and ...

Geographic and phylogenetic sampling of avian wing-bone morphology. Using measurements from 7366 skeletal specimens, we analyze variation in wing-bone length across 1520 bird species, representing ...

You can know a lot of things about birds just by the shape of their wings. A seafaring albatross, stretching out its sail-like airfoils, lives a very different life from a ground-dwelling antpitta ...

Certain air sacs have evolved in multiple lineages of soaring birds, and it emerges that these probably function to reduce the force required from the major flight muscles as they hold the wings in ...

Insight into bird flight sheds light on the animals’ evolution and provides design inspiration for engineering. Writing in Nature, Harvey et al. 1 report findings that deepen our understanding of some ...