the.com/feathers
dinosaurs invented them for warmth, then birds stole the idea and learned to fly
means The light, soft, flat-vaned structures that grow from a bird's skin, providing insulation, color, and the lift surfaces needed for flight.
from From Old English 'feather,' going back to a Proto-Germanic root (compare German 'Feder' and Dutch 'veer'). Linguists trace it further to a Proto-Indo-European root meaning 'to fly' or 'wing' — the same ancient source that, by other paths, gave Latin 'penna' (a quill, hence 'pen') and Greek 'pteron' (wing, as in pterodactyl). So at its very root, the word for a feather is really the word for the act of flying.
- origin
- evolved on dinosaurs millions of years before flight
- weightlessness
- a bird's feathers often outweigh its skeleton
- colors
- blue feathers have no pigment, just light tricks
- upkeep
- birds spend hours daily preening to stay airborne
- record
- swans carry over 25,000 of them
archaeopteryx — 150-million-year-old fossil showing transitional feathers between dinosaurs and birds, discovered in bavaria
lyrebird tail feathers — australian bird with 16 elongated tail feathers that create acoustic mimicry of chainsaws and camera shutters
bar-tailed godwit feathers — migratory shorebird with feathers built for 7,500-mile nonstop flights from alaska to new zealand