Chickadees are interested in scents. That’s the news from a study out of Lehigh University, the first to document naturally hybridizing songbirds’ preference for the smell of their own species. Amber Rice, an evolutionary biologist at Lehigh, studies hybridization — when separate species come into contact and mate — to better understand how species originate […]
[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n a new study published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, an international team led by Professor Baoyu Jiang of Nanjing University and including Dr Michael Pittman of the Department of Earth Sciences, the University of Hong Kong, shows that pterosaurs had at least four types of feathers in common with their close relatives the […]
Millions of Alaska birds nest on rocky emerald islands seen by few people other than ship captains. One of the funkiest of these creatures is the crested auklet, which looks like a bassist in a punk band and smells like a tangerine. These hand-size birds have intrigued Hector Douglas for years. He just wrote a […]
A newly-designed material, which mimics the wing structure of owls, could help make wind turbines, computer fans and even planes much quieter. Early wind tunnel tests of the coating have shown a substantial reduction in noise without any noticeable effect on aerodynamics. An investigation into how owls fly and hunt in silence has enabled researchers […]