One of the remarkable abilities that birds possess is their ability to regenerate the feathers that they shed. Unlike human hair and nails, feathers consist of keratin and do not heal once damaged.

A Fork-tailed Flycatcher. Credit: Valentina Gómez-Bahamón, Field Museum Bird feathers have many different functions. Softer down keeps a bird warm and stiffer wing feathers are used for flight.

Emperor penguins live comfortably in frigid Antarctic conditions thanks to a highly specialized feather coat. Researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego plucked away the ...

Every bird you’ve ever seen— every robin, every pigeon, every penguin at the zoo— is a living dinosaur. Birds are the only group of dinosaurs that survived the asteroid-induced mass extinction 66 ...