Birds are often sleek, streamlined, aerodynamic shapes. But a lot of that smoothness comes from
their feathers. Underneath the feathers, birds do not look the way you would expect them to.
Let's check out some weird bird skeletons.
This is a Kakapo. The Kakapo is the largest parrot in the world,
cannot fly, and is mostly awake at night. Let's use our x-ray glasses to see its skeleton.
In the skeleton, you can see the distinct parrot-shaped bill in the skeleton that is used
for crushing food. The eye orbits are normally sized, even though this is a nocturnal species.
Then that neck! The Kakapo on the outside looks like a floofy ball of feathers, but its neck
is LONG! It has reduced wings and almost no keel (sternum) as it is a flightless species. The legs
of the living bird look tiny, but the skeleton reveals how long those legs are! Then the feet are
zygodactyl. They have two toes forward, two toes back. Those are perching feet like other parrots.
Next let's look at Burrowing Owls. They are unusual owls that are awake during the day
and live in burrows in the ground. So what can we see in their skeletons?
Woah, HOW long are these legs!?! They're longer than the rest of the bird! Most Burrowing Owls
do not dig their own burrows, but you can imagine how they could dig
by reaching forward with each foot on those long legs. Burrowing owls can also chase prey by
running with those long legs. Then the claws and beak are sharp for killing prey. I'm also noticing
a gigantic eye orbit even though this is mostly a daytime species of owl. Relatively
short neck. But well-developed wings and keel indicate that this bird can fly well.
We should see a Galapagos Penguin. These birds can't fly, but they spend a lot
of time swimming with their wings. What's hiding under those feathers?
The penguin skeleton looks mostly like the penguin.
The bones are remarkably thick for a bird because they are flightless and don't need to worry about
weight. Even so, they retain a large keel and thick wing bones to help them swim.
The neck is surprisingly long compared to the living penguin.
The tail is also long. But the one fact that you can never forget is that penguins have knees. They
have surprisingly long legs, and their knees are a little bit above the tips of their flippers.
This is a common question about penguins, so now you know the answer: penguins have knees.
I would love to use these X-ray glasses to see inside a Crimson Topaz Hummingbird.
These birds can hover with their fast wingbeats,
letting them reach into flowers to get delicious nectar. But what do they look like on the inside?
I don't think anyone would guess that THIS is what a hummingbird skeleton looks like. The beaks are
long, of course, but the neck is this twisty strand of vertebrae that somehow fit into the
aerodynamic shell of feathers. This picture makes the wings look small, but they are pretty big.
The wing muscles connect to the keel, which is GIGANTIC. By looking at the keel we can guess that
flight is very important to hummingbirds, because this is where all their flight muscles attach.
In fact, hummingbirds generate lift on both the up and down motions of their wings.
So their pectoral muscles must be large (like most other birds)
but the supracoracoideal muscles that pull their wings up must also be large. Their extreme flight
muscles lead to an extreme keel. These birds must have the weirdest skeleton in the world!
What we can learn from this is that birds are more interesting than they appear at first glance.
The outward appearance of birds is shaped by factors like insulation and
aerodynamics. But the inward appearance of birds is about accomplishing whatever
it is that the bird needs to do to survive. This is another example of how you can find
new surprises if you look closely enough at Life!
Thanks for taking the time to learn about birds. You can keep discovering new things
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