Many birds fly, but some, like penguins and ostriches, don't, revealing an evolutionary twist. Flightless birds adapted to ...

On the evening of April 26, 1972, the 61-year-old ornithologist climbed into the back seat of a detective’s car at Bangor ...

Current evolutionary models include five feather developmental stages, with the development of the barbules occurring in stage three and the interlocking mechanism appearing in stage four.

Then prepare a slide and zoom in to see the individual structure of the barbs and barbules, and maybe even some hooklets.

They also lacked a well-developed central shaft, which hints that the barbs and barbules of modern feathers – the two finest tiers of branching – evolved before the shaft.

But when the researchers examined sandgrouse belly feathers with scanning electron microscopes to catch the smallest details, the barbules appeared coiled, forming tiny straw-like structures.

Down feathers-These feather tends to be short and placed closest to the body, trapping body heat. Because these feathers lack pennaceous barbules, they are delicate, sensitive, and thin.

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.

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

To observe how the feathers performed their water-toting magic, the researchers examined specimens they got from natural history museums and looked at dry feathers up close using light microscopy ...