We often hear people say that modern birds evolved from some dinosaurs. Apart from both being reptiles, what evidence have paleontologist discovered that validates this claim?

A small bird-like dinosaur, called the archaeopteryx (left), lived in what is now southern Germany about 150 million years ago. About the size of a crow, it had a shortened tail, long hands, a perching toe slightly turned backward, and wing feathers that were adapted for flight. This creature has long been considered the most ancient bird known. However, despite its birdlike characteristics, its body more closely resembled those of small meat-eating dinosaurs than those of more birdlike dinosaurs. Many paleontologists identify the archaeopteryx as the so-called missing ...

Brood parasites are organisms that rely on others to raise their young. It's the equivalent of having a baby, placing him/her in a basket, and then leaving it on a random person's front porch. While this may seem strange to us, it's not uncommon to some species of birds. One of nature's shrewdest examples of this behavior comes from cowbirds. Not only do they lay their eggs inside the nests of other birds and expect them to rear the foster chicks as their own, scientists have found another way these birds may be harming their hosts -- their extra-thick eggshells can crack the hosts’ own eggs when they falls into the nest.

To test this idea, researchers of recent study gathered 157 freshly laid cowbird eggs and dropped them onto host eggs fro ...

Well, obviously it's white, but take a look at its bill!

The attractive 7.5-inch-long bill is possessed by both male and female toucans. Interestingly, they use them during a mating ritual, pitching fruit to one another, but has very limited use as an excavation tool. Toucans make their nests in tree hollows found in rain forest regions of Southern Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean region to which they are native.

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The little penguin (Eudyptula minor) is the smallest species of penguin. They grow to an average of 33 cm (13 in) in height and 43 cm (17 in) in length and usually weighs about 1.5 kilogram on average (3.3 pounds). They are mainly found on the coastlines of southern Australia and New Zealand. In Australia, they are often called fairy penguins. In New Zealand, they are more commonly known as little blue penguins or blue penguins owing to their slate-blue plumage. ...

Can you spot the cat amongst the pigeons? This is Hungarian artist's - Dudolf - latest optical illusion that has some several viewers puzzled. The cause of all this difficulty is likely to have something to do with the way in which the brain processes visual information, by identifying repeating patterns and then using this to automatically fill in the gaps in peripheral vision. This makes it very difficult to spot minor details or irregularities in our visual field without focusing directly on these elements, which means you probably won't see the cat unless you stare straight at it.
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Meet the cassowary. These are flightless birds native to the tropical forests of New Guinea and northeastern Australia. There are three extant species. The most common of these, the southern cassowary, is the third tallest and second heaviest living bird, smaller only than the ostrich and emu.

All three species have horn-like but soft and spongy crests called casques on their heads, up to 18 cm (7 inches), which serves several purposes. The most interesting being that the wedge-shaped casque may have evolved to protect the head of this animal by deflecting falling fruit, since cassowaries spend a lot of time under trees where seeds the size of golfballs or larger fall from heights of up to 30 metres! ...

Southern rockhopper penguins (Eudyptes chrysocome) mate for life, reuniting with the same partner year after year during mating season. But even though they're monogamous, a new study reveals that penguin couples really don’t spend much time together.

Using GPS trackers mounted to the penguins’ legs, scientists monitored 16 birds over the course of a mating season. The data show that males arrived at the nesting site approximately 6 days before their female counterparts and stayed about 6 days longer. However, the short mating season means the pairs are only united for about 20 to 30 days a year. And when they were separated, it was usually by a large distance: During the winter months, partners were separated by an average distance of abo ...