While humans have three color cones in the retina sensitive to red, green and blue light, birds have a fourth color cone that can detect ultraviolet light. A research team …read more Source:: Science
Tag: birds
How birds evolved big brains
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•Evolutionary biologists and paleontologists have reconstructed the evolution of the avian brain using a massive dataset of brain volumes from dinosaurs, extinct birds like Archaeopteryx and the great auk, and …read more Source:: Science
Ancient Egyptians gathered birds from the wild for sacrifice and mummification
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•In ancient Egypt, sacred ibises were collected from their natural habitats to be ritually sacrificed, according to a new study. …read more Source:: Science
US and Canada have lost more than 1 in 4 birds in the past 50 years
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•Data show that since 1970, the US and Canada have lost nearly 3 billion birds, a massive reduction in abundance involving hundreds of species, from beloved backyard songbirds to long-distance …read more Source:: Science
Big brains or big guts: Choose one
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•A global study comparing 2,062 birds finds that, in highly variable environments, birds tend to have either larger or smaller brains relative to their body size. Birds with smaller brains …read more Source:: Science
The brains of birds synchronize when they sing duets
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•Vocal control areas in the brain of weaver birds fire in time when they sing together. …read more Source:: Science
Novel Hawaiian communities operate similarly to native ecosystems
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•On the Hawaiian island of Oahu, it is possible to stand in a lush tropical forest that doesn’t contain a single native plant. The birds that once dispersed native seeds …read more Source:: Science
Palaeolithic art featuring birds and humans discovered
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•A new article tells how researchers found — in the site of Hort de la Bequera (Margalef de Montsant, Priorat) — an artistic piece from 12,500 years ago in which …read more Source:: Science
Rare fossil bird deepens mystery of avian extinctions
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•Today’s birds descend from a small number of bird species living before the dinosaur extinction. Some of the birds that went extinct, the enantiornithines, were actually more common than and …read more Source:: Science
Teaching wild birds to sing a new tune
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•Like toddlers learning to speak, young birds learn to sing by listening to the voices of adults. Now, researchers have shown for the first time that they could teach young …read more Source:: Science