Scientists get peacock feathers to emit laser light after adding dye and green pulses, revealing surprising biophotonic ...

The male desert sandgrouse might not be much to look at, but his belly feathers give him the unique ability to absorb and carry water. Researchers have, for the first time, closely examined the ...

Researchers at ETH Zurich have created a material traversed by a network of channels the size of micrometres in the same way as the microstructure of a bird’s feather. To do so they have developed a ...

Peacocks, perhaps nature's most trippy bird, shake their tail feathers when it's time to attract a new mate. Why? Shaking those feathers — called "train-rattling" — causes an illusion where the ...

The color of some feathers on dinosaurs and early birds has been identified for the first time. The research found that the theropod dinosaur Sinosauropteryx had simple bristles -- precursors of ...

A North Carolina State University researcher is part of a team that has discovered fossilized feathers from a giant penguin that lived near the Equator more than 36 million years ago. These feathery ...

Inspired by the feathers of a bird species whose plumage absorbs nearly all light, researchers at Cornell University have created a fabric that does the same. Their new material reflects only 0.13% of ...

Dippers (Cinclidae) are the only passerines that find their prey almost exclusively under water. We examined the breast feathers of the five species of dippers for barb diameter and spacing. These ...

Some of the brightest colors in nature are created by tiny nanostructures with a structure similar to beer foam or a sponge, according to Yale University researchers. Most colors in nature—from the ...

Some feathered dinosaurs may have lost the ability to fly, revealing that the evolution of flight was far more complex than ...

Hummingbirds are some of the most brightly-colored things in the entire world. Their iridescent feathers reflect light in a way that other birds can't match, and scientists weren't sure what made ...