The Covering of Feathers

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Please note that our editors may make some formatting changes or correct spelling or grammatical errors, and may also contact you if any clarifications are needed. The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. Learn More in these related Britannica articles: Like the scales of reptiles, and those on the feet of birds, feathers are made of keratin, a fibrous protein also found in hair. Feather s vary considerably in structure and function.

Contour feathers form most of the surface of the bird, streamlining it for…. Animal hair and feathers were added to many hairstyles. An important form of regalia was a feathered headdress, which sometimes included buffalo horns, ermine tails, and quillwork. Feather work, for example, was made and used in other parts of Polynesia, but no other group produced anything as spectacular as the feather cloaks, capes, and helmets of Hawaiian chiefs. These were worn not only for important ceremonial occasions but also for actual combat.

Such structures are now known in a compsognathid Sinosauropteryx , a therizinosaurid Beipiaosaurus , a dromaeosaur Sinornithosaurus , and an alvarezsaurid Shuvuuia. The filamentous structures on the skin…. Hairs and feathers develop from a somewhat similar kind of rudiment. Not all camouflage has to be drab.

Feathers - Visual Dictionary

For example, the vibrant green contour feathers of male Eclectus Parrots Eclectus roratus serve a camouflage function during foraging trips in the rainforest canopy. Back at the nest cavity where the green stands out against the brown tree bark, the male coloration aids in the intense competition with other males to win female mates. Male Eclectus Parrots likely evolved their green coloration as a tradeoff between effective camouflage and display.

This is a rare example of feathers that allow birds to both hide and show off. Mute Swan chicks by Mike Scott. Have you ever wondered why some birds hatch naked while others are covered in a coat of fuzzy feathers? Many young water birds must be able to swim and forage alongside their parents almost immediately after hatching. These precocial precocial pree-KO-shul describing a chick that is mobile quickly after hatching and requires little parental care chicks hatch with a full coat of natal down to keep them warm in cold water.

Young Mute Swans Cygnus olor for example, hatch with a fuzzy coat of natal down and after a few weeks, replace the natal down with an inner layer of adult down and an outer coat of contour feathers. In contrast, the young of many songbirds are born completely naked. These altricial altricial Al-TRISH-ul describing a chick that is unable to walk, fly, or swim soon after hatching and requires parental care for an extended period species stay warm by absorbing heat from attending parents and huddling together in an insulated nest.

Utterly dependent at hatch, altricial species, like Purple Martins Progne subis , require lots of parental care. Purple Martins by OakleyOriginals. Common Loon by U. Fish and Wildlife Service — Midwest Region. The reds, orange and yellow colors of many feathers are caused by various carotenoids. A bird's feathers undergo wear and tear and are replaced periodically during the bird's life through molting.

New feathers, known when developing as blood, or pin feathers , depending on the stage of growth, are formed through the same follicles from which the old ones were fledged. The presence of melanin in feathers increases their resistance to abrasion. They observed that the greater resistance of the darker birds confirmed Gloger's rule. Although sexual selection plays a major role in the development of feathers, in particular the color of the feathers it is not the only conclusion available.

New studies are suggesting that the unique feathers of birds is also a large influence on many important aspects of avian behavior, such as the height at which a different species build their nests. Since females are the prime care givers, evolution has helped select females to display duller colored down so that they may blend into the nesting environment. The position of the nest and whether it has a greater chance of being under predation has exerted constraints on female birds' plumage.

Since the female is the main care giver in some species of birds, evolution has helped select traits that make her feathers dull and often allow her to blend into the surroundings. The height study found that birds that nest in the canopies of trees often have many more predator attacks due to the brighter color of feathers that the female displays. Birds develop their bright colors from living around certain colors.

Bird Feather Types, Anatomy, Growth, Color, and Molting

Most bird species often blend into their environment, due to some degree of camouflage, so if the species habitat is full of colors and patterns, the species would eventually evolve to blend in to avoid being eaten. Birds' feathers show a large range of colors, even exceeding the variety of many plants, leaf and flower colors. The feather surface is the home for some ectoparasites, notably feather lice Phthiraptera and feather mites.

Feather lice typically live on a single host and can move only from parents to chicks, between mating birds, and, occasionally, by phoresy. This life history has resulted in most of the parasite species being specific to the host and coevolving with the host, making them of interest in phylogenetic studies. Feather holes are chewing traces of lice most probably Brueelia spp. They were described on barn swallows , and because of easy countability, many evolutionary, ecological, and behavioral publications use them to quantify the intensity of infestation.

Parasitic cuckoos which grow up in the nests of other species also have host specific feather lice and these seem to be transmitted only after the young cuckoos leave the host nest. Birds maintain their feather condition by preening and bathing in water or dust. It has been suggested that a peculiar behavior of birds, anting , in which ants are introduced into the plumage, helps to reduce parasites, but no supporting evidence has been found. Feathers are both soft and excellent at trapping heat ; thus, they are sometimes used in high-class bedding , especially pillows , blankets , and mattresses.

They are also used as filling for winter clothing and outdoor bedding, such as quilted coats and sleeping bags.

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Goose and eider down have great loft , the ability to expand from a compressed, stored state to trap large amounts of compartmentalized, insulating air. Bird feathers have long been used for fletching arrows. Colorful feathers such as those belonging to pheasants have been used to decorate fishing lures. Feathers of large birds most often geese have been and are used to make quill pens. The word pen itself is derived from the Latin penna , meaning feather. Feathers are also valuable in aiding the identification of species in forensic studies, particularly in bird strikes to aircraft.

The ratios of hydrogen isotopes in feathers help in determining the geographic origins of birds. The poultry industry produces a large amount of feathers as waste, which, like other forms of keratin, are slow to decompose. Feather waste has been used in a number of industrial applications as a medium for culturing microbes, [52] biodegradeable polymers, [53] and production of enzymes. Some groups of Native people in Alaska have used ptarmigan feathers as temper non-plastic additives in pottery manufacture since the first millennium BC in order to promote thermal shock resistance and strength.

The hunting of birds for decorative and ornamental feathers including in Victorian fashion has endangered some species. Eagle feathers have great cultural and spiritual value to American Indians in the US and First Nations peoples in Canada as religious objects. In the United States the religious use of eagle and hawk feathers is governed by the eagle feather law , a federal law limiting the possession of eagle feathers to certified and enrolled members of federally recognized Native American tribes. In South America, brews made from the feathers of condors are used in traditional medications.

During the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, there was a booming international trade in plumes for extravagant women's hats and other headgear. Frank Chapman noted in that feathers of as many as 40 species of birds were used in about three-fourths of the ladies' hats that he observed in New York City. Conservationists led a major campaign against the use of feathers in hats. This contributed to passage of the Lacey Act in , and to changes in fashion. The ornamental feather market then largely collapsed.

More recently, rooster plumage has become a popular trend as a hairstyle accessory, with feathers formerly used as fishing lures now being used to provide color and style to hair. These feathers are dyed and manipulated to enhance their appearance, as poultry feathers are naturally often dull in appearance compared to the feathers of wild birds.

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Feather products manufacturing in Europe has declined in the last 60 years, mainly due to competition from Asia. Feathers have adorned hats at many prestigious events such as weddings and Ladies Day at race courses Royal Ascot. The functional view on the evolution of feathers has traditionally focused on insulation, flight and display.

Discoveries of non-flying Late Cretaceous feathered dinosaurs in China, [64] however, suggest that flight could not have been the original primary function as the feathers simply would not have been capable of providing any form of lift. In one fossil specimen of the Parave Anchiornis huxleyi , the features are so well preserved that the melanosome pigment cells structure can be observed. By comparing the shape of the fossil melanosomes to melanosomes from extant birds, the color and pattern of the feathers on Anchiornis could be determined.

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This pattern is similar to the coloration of many extant bird species, which use plumage coloration for display and communication, including sexual selection and camouflage. It is likely that non-avian dinosaur species utilized plumage patterns for similar functions as modern birds before the origin of flight. In many cases, the physiological condition of the birds especially males is indicated by the quality of their feathers, and this is used by the females in mate choice.

Feathers and scales are made up of two distinct forms of keratin , and it was long thought that each type of keratin was exclusive to each skin structure feathers and scales. However, a study published in confirmed the presence of feather keratin in the early stages of development of American alligator scales.

This type of keratin, previously thought to be specific to feathers, is suppressed during embryological development of the alligator and so is not present in the scales of mature alligators. The presence of this homologous keratin in both birds and crocodilians indicates that it was inherited from a common ancestor.

Discussion

This may suggest that crocodilian scales, bird and dinosaur feathers, and pterosaur pycnofibres are all developmental expressions of the same primitive archosaur skin structures; suggesting that feathers and pycnofibers could be homologous. Several non-avian dinosaurs had feathers on their limbs that would not have functioned for flight.

Another theory posits that the original adaptive advantage of early feathers was their pigmentation or iridescence, contributing to sexual preference in mate selection. The majority of dinosaurs known to have had feathers or protofeathers are theropods , however featherlike "filamentous integumentary structures" are also known from the ornithischian dinosaurs Tianyulong and Psittacosaurus.

However, it is believed that the stage-1 feathers see Evolutionary stages section below such as those seen in these two ornithischians likely functioned in display. Since the s, dozens of feathered dinosaurs have been discovered in the clade Maniraptora , which includes the clade Avialae and the recent common ancestors of birds, Oviraptorosauria and Deinonychosauria. In , the discovery of a feathered oviraptorosaurian, Caudipteryx zoui , challenged the notion of feathers as a structure exclusive to Avialae.

Present on the forelimbs and tails, their integumentary structure has been accepted [ by whom? In the clade Deinonychosauria, the continued divergence of feathers is also apparent in the families Troodontidae and Dromaeosauridae. Branched feathers with rachis, barbs, and barbules were discovered in many members including Sinornithosaurus millenii , a dromaeosaurid found in the Yixian formation Previously, a temporal paradox existed in the evolution of feathers—theropods with highly derived bird-like characteristics occurred at a later time than Archaeopteryx —suggesting that the descendants of birds arose before the ancestor.

By predating Archaeopteryx , Anchiornis proves the existence of a modernly feathered theropod ancestor, providing insight into the dinosaur-bird transition. The specimen shows distribution of large pennaceous feathers on the forelimbs and tail, implying that pennaceous feathers spread to the rest of the body at an earlier stage in theropod evolution. Two small wings trapped in amber dating to mya show plumage existed in some bird predecessors. The wings most probably belonged to enantiornithes , a diverse group of avian dinosaurs.

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A large phylogenetic analysis of early dinosaurs by Matthew Baron, David B. Norman and Paul Barrett found that Theropoda is actually more closely related to Ornithischia , to which it formed the sister group within the clade Ornithoscelida. The study also suggested that if the feather-like structures of theropods and ornithischians are of common evolutionary origin then it would be possible that feathers were restricted to Ornithoscelida. If so, then the origin of feathers would have likely occurred as early as the Middle Triassic. Several studies of feather development in the embryos of modern birds, coupled with the distribution of feather types among various prehistoric bird precursors, have allowed scientists to attempt a reconstruction of the sequence in which feathers first evolved and developed into the types found on modern birds.

Feather evolution was broken down into the following stages by Xu and Guo in However, Foth showed that some of these purported stages stages 2 and 5 in particular are likely simply artifacts of preservation caused by the way fossil feathers are crushed and the feather remains or imprints are preserved.

Foth re-interpreted stage 2 feathers as crushed or misidentified feathers of at least stage 3, and stage 5 feathers as crushed stage 6 feathers.