Who knew sharper images and clearer sound would be good for our feathered friends? Come January 15,
Petrels, also known as the ’Ua’u, are only found in
Who knew sharper images and clearer sound would be good for our feathered friends? Come January 15,
Petrels, also known as the ’Ua’u, are only found in
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Ostriches, kiwis, emus—these birds always look out of place, bound to the land while their feathered cousins take to the sky. It’s easy to imagine that flightlessness evolved only once, and that bird species then split into several species; indeed, most scientists figured that was what happened. But according to a study led by John Harshman of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, that’s not so: Birds lost the ability to fly at least three times.
Harshman’s team began to poke holes in the common ancestor hypothesis by examining DNA from the different birds to see how they were related. The researchers found that emus and kiwis were actually more closely related to a ground-dwelling but flight-capable bird called the tinamous, which lives in the Americas, than they were to ostriches.
They cheer together. They lose together. They commiserate together. In that way, Andy Radford says, South African birds called green woodhoopoes are much like soccer fans in his native Britain.
Radford, a University of Bristol professor, found that woodhoopoes live in gangs of about a dozen, and those groups don’t get along terribly well—they often descend into shouting contests. Unlike human shouting matches, which usually just end up with everyone unhappier than they were before, the birds’ contests have a definite winner. But, Radford says, the interesting part is what happens with the losers.