Sullivan found that barbules -- the smaller, hook-like structures that connect feather barbs -- are spaced within 8 to 16 micrometers of one another in all birds, from the hummingbird to the condor.

Flight feathers are stiff and, because birds can control their positions, act almost like individual wings. The individual feather "branches" (or, more correctly, barbs) have their own barbules ...

The super-black feathers of birds-of-paradise, meanwhile, look very different. Their barbules, instead of lying flat, curve upward. And instead of being smooth cylinders, they are studded in ...

Video of water spreading through the specialized sandgrouse feathers, under magnification, shows the uncoiling and spreading of the feather’s barbules as they become wet.

Additionally, natural barbs and barbules are capable of trapping air on a feather's underside, while diverting it on top. Sullivan believes that this quality could also be replicated in ...

D: Male R. dimidiatus shiny red rump feather with expanded, oblong barb and strap-shaped barbules. Scale bars in left column are 200 μm; scale bars in right column (B, D, F, H) are 50 μm ...

But in dry sandgrouse feathers, the inner zone of the feather has barbules that are helically coiled at their base that then straighten out. In the outer zone, the barbules are straight and much ...

Even smaller filaments called barbules branch off from the barbs, and it’s the barbules that give the feathers their mesmeric properties. Each barbule looks like a row of cushion-shaped segments.

This type of feather is also found in McKellar’s amber and some of them have barbules wit tight coils at their bases. Grebes – modern diving birds – have similar coils in their barbules.

The researchers compared the fossilized feathers with feathers from 11 modern ibises. They focused on the feathers' barbules, microscopic structures within the downy part of a feather near the base.

To better understand how hummingbirds achieve this eye-popping iridescence, researchers examined microscopic, light-reflecting structures called melanosomes in their feathers. The researchers ...