- [Narrator] Feathery looks are back in fashion.
- One thing that makes feathers stand out
as a fashion device is that they changed
the profile of the individual.
Charles Darwin even commented in one of his writings
when he said, "the head is the chief seat of adornment."
True in people and also true in birds
where you see feathers in a crest
that is visible from a long way off,
telling one bird what species of bird it's looking at.
- [Narrator] Biologist and author Thor Hanson
explores the unexpected origins of feathers in fashion
and how our quest for plumes brought
some species to the brink of extinction.
[upbeat music]
- We find plumage attractive
in the same way that birds find it attractive.
We have co-opted them for many of the same purposes
for which they evolved in nature.
- [Narrator] The history of feathers
in human fashions runs deep.
Indigenous cultures around the world
co-opted feathers from local birds,
often as displays of social status.
- The elaborate feather capes
were made in the Hawaiian islands.
On certain south Pacific Islands,
people used them as a currency.
The Aztecs made feathered costumes,
detailed paintings.
The Nazcas in Peru, the Egyptians
had strong traditions about the importance
of feathers in their culture.
So feathers run deep in cultures.
In male fashion, feather work for a long time
was associated with the military
and prowess on the battlefield.
The very phrase, "a feather in his cap"
comes to us from a tradition
where feathers were added to the helms
of warriors who performed well during battles.
- [Narrator] Throughout time, rare and expensive plumes
were used by the wealthy to convey status,
but it wasn't really until the 19th century
that feather work in fashion expanded
and became focused on women's looks,
specifically feathered hats.
- Ostrich feathers in particular
had great value as well at that time.
So much so that in South Africa,
there were ostrich ranches
where they had up to a million birds under domestication.
And you could harvest the feathers
from domesticated ostrich sustainably
by clipping the feather off at the base.
And the birds would simply grow
a new set of plumes in the next season.
So ostrich feathers had so much value at that time
that it is a point of fact
that when the Titanic sank in 1912,
the most valuable cargo on the ship
was not some fancy diamond as you might see in the movies,
but it was feathers, 40 cases of prime ostrich plumes,
on their way from the feather merchants
of London to the hat makers of New York City,
and valued in today's dollars at nearly $2.5 million.
- [Narrator] At the peak of the Gilded Age bird hat craze,
famed ornithologist Frank Chapman
was astounded at the variety of species
he observed on the streets in 1886.
- He walked through the Financial District,
and he quickly managed to tabulate
40 different species of birds
that he might have seen in Central Park,
but they were all adorning the hats
of the women walking down the street.
This of course, was having a terrible impact
on wild bird populations, really, around the world.
- [Narrator] One of the casualties
was the Carolina parakeet,
which went extinct in the wild in 1904,
a victim of hunting and deforestation.
Another species being ravaged was the snowy egret.
- It had wonderful plumes that held their shape
in all sorts of great ways.
And so it led to do these great hunting efforts
that were wiping out egret colonies.
It doesn't take long for that sort
of hunting practice to bring
the populations crashing down.
The desire for beautiful hats
and other fashion items was driving,
in some cases, close to the extinction
of some of what had once been common birds.
This is where we see the beginnings
of the Audubon Society.
Through groups of women organizing
to push back against this fashion craze.
And it led to this idea that people
should give up something that may have value
economically to preserve things in nature.
It was a radical idea at the time,
but it led to the passing in North America
of bills and laws that are still on the books
protecting birds today.
- [Narrator] Eventually, during World War I,
feathered hats began to fall out of favor
with more women entering the workplace
and the rise of automobiles.
Places where fancy plumed hats were inconvenient.
[soft music]
- It turns out there are very few things in nature
that have evolved for as many purposes as feathers.
Yes, they can be beautiful and used
for allurement in the birds,
but they have also evolved to be waterproof
to protect the birds from the elements.
There are feathers that are the best insulation we know of,
wonderfully fluffy trapping all that heat
against the body of the bird.
And then of course there are flight feathers
that are an airfoil shape,
giving them wonder maneuverability in flight,
and are now very visible in the fossil evidence
within a particular lineage of dinosaurs,
the theropods which includes
such famous meat heaters as Tyrannosaurus rex
and the Velociraptors they had plumes
that resemble what we see today in birds.
Display was an early use of feathers
way back in the dinosaurs.
There are fossils so well preserved
that they contain structures that allow paleontologists
to interpret the color of the feathers.
These little organelles called melanosomes
are associated with color.
We know that dinosaur feathers were colored.
We know that they must have been used for display.
So this history of plumage
that is used for attracting mates,
used for various displays in the bird kingdom
has a very, very long history.
[upbeat music]
Because feathers are used
in mating rituals to attract a mate,
there's great evolutionary pressure
on their shape and on their color
and on their effectiveness at that task.
And that means that there is a huge range
of feather colors and shapes in nature,
different ways that birds have evolved their plumage
for that sense of allurement.
The birds of paradise have evolved
not only elaborate plumage,
but incredible dances to go along with them
where they have medallions of colored feathers
and they have elaborate wing feathers
where they thrust them up behind them.
So you almost lose the shape of the bird
in this creative display of feather work.
And it's typically the males of the species
that do this sort of display.
And so you end up in these situations
of what biologists call runaway selection,
where because the females have a preference
for a particular look in the males,
there is increased pressure for evolution
to make that look even more and more extreme.
And that leads us to display feathers of a peacock,
for example, totally outrageous,
and with no function in nature
other than to look good for females.
We all know ostriches are flightless.
They gave up the ability to fly
and followed a different evolutionary strategy,
gaining large size, fast, running capabilities
to live on the Savannahs of Africa.
So where you see a typical flight feather
that has a closed vein and an offset rachis
to give it an aerodynamic airfoil shape,
the ostrich is have done away with that completely.
The flight feather of an ostrich looks like this.
The veins are not closed whatsoever.
They have lost all those things
and evolved specifically for purposes of display.
Some biologists feel that the elaborate feather work
is what we call an honest display
that it must be connected
to some advantage that you might get
from mating with that particular male.
Other biologists feel that
this sort of runaway selection
can just be a beauty for beauty's sake.
It doesn't actually connect to anything about their vigor.
It's not unusual to see ostrich's featured
heavily in fashion because they have these wonderful
large, lustrous feathers that aren't used
for display on the birds.
They are decorating her arms in a sense
which is extremely appropriate
because these are flight feathers
from probably a male ostrich
to have that much luster and display.
When we go to a function like the Met Gala,
it's almost like going bird watching in a way,
the idea of allurement to look beautiful,
to attract attention.
Isn't it a happy coincidence we find feathers beautiful
in the same ways that birds do?
They use them to display to one another.
We can borrow them and use them
to display amongst ourselves,
meaning that we have a lot more in common
with our feathered friends
than we might have ever thought.