Page 22 - The Origin of Birds and Flight

20 The Origin of Birds and Flight

With their ability to imitate sounds including human speech, parrots
are among the cleverest of living things. Although anatomy of their
mouths is wholly different—they have no teeth or lips, for instance—
they are able to produce sounds very similar to those they hear.
With their long beaks, the hummingbirds—the smallest known spe-
cies of birds—can feed on flower nectar and the small insects they find
inside flowers. In order to feed, they need to hover in the air in front of
the flower, and with its specially created features, they are the only spe-
cies of bird able to do so.
The owl, thanks to the special creation in its soft but rounded feath-
ers, hunts its prey at night in complete silence. Thus the owl’s wing,
which prevents air turbulence—and thus, noise—has taken its place
among the designs that scientists are seeking to replicate.
The albatross, whose wing span of 3.5 meters (11.48 feet) is the larg-
est in the world, spends 92% of its life over the open sea, almost never
alighting on solid ground. Albatrosses’ almost constant state of flight is
made possible by their use of air currents, as they open their wings out
as far as possible, without flapping them.
Jays bury the bonito fish they collect for later use. With their power-
ful memories, they are able to find and extract these fish even after nine
months have passed, in forests where every tree resembles every other.
The way that birds show devoted behavior towards their young is
also most striking. Some birds construct highly intricate nests, taking
account of a great many factors during their construction. Birds living by
the seashore, for example, build nests that cannot be flooded, using the
appropriate materials for this. They even calculate how their future
young should come to no harm in the event that water levels rise. Some
marsh-dwelling birds build nests with high walls so that their eggs can-
not be blown out by the wind.
How are such different types of nests, intelligent behavior and altru-
ism, whose variety would fill many volumes, possible for these crea-
tures, which are totally without reason or training?