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Speaker 2: Oh hey, it's that rock that you found at the
Speaker 2: lake that, for some reason just said hey, put me
Speaker 2: in your pocket. Ali Ward and welcome to the Somologies
Speaker 2: episode of Feathers. Very exciting. What is smologues? By the way,
Speaker 2: if you've landed here, Smologies are shorter, classroom friendly, kids
Speaker 2: safe episodes you can listen to for all ages, kind
Speaker 2: of like digests. You can listen to with the family.
Speaker 2: If you want the full episode, it's linked in the
Speaker 2: show notes. But this one we made safe for you
Speaker 2: and your kids. You're welcome. Okay, let's get into it. Plumology.
Speaker 2: Did you know this was the thing? I did not.
Speaker 2: So it comes from the Latin for down or her
Speaker 2: first beard, and later plume came to mean like a
Speaker 2: stream of smoke, So we're talking, oh manner of feathers,
Speaker 2: oh feathers Now. I have already covered ornithology. It came
Speaker 2: out in November twenty nineteen, but I was thrilled when
Speaker 2: this ologist at the Natural History Museum of la suggested
Speaker 2: via email that there were many, many more subologies with
Speaker 2: feathered friends, including them dang feathers themselves. So I made
Speaker 2: haste to the museum one sleepy Wednesday afternoon, right before
Speaker 2: they closed for the day, and I met up with
Speaker 2: this ologist who was wearing a flowery blouse and a
Speaker 2: museum ID on a dangling lanyard, and I asked her
Speaker 2: all the quilled questions that would rattle out of my
Speaker 2: dome as well as yours. So shake off the dust
Speaker 2: and get ready to soar the sky and learn about
Speaker 2: what makes a feather a feather, how they evolved, why
Speaker 2: they're important, the longest bird tail, peacock plumes, ridescence, the
Speaker 2: blackest black tiny feathers, huge ones, dinosaur myths, and mysteries
Speaker 2: and more with feather researcher and professional plumologist, doctor Alison Shaltons.
Speaker 3: ALGYLOGI knowlogists, Now you are a plumologist.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I'm a plumologist. I steady bird feathers and
Speaker 4: how they evolve and kind of more specifically, I think
Speaker 4: about the colors of feathers, but the structure and the
Speaker 4: development all of that is integral into the whole picture.
Speaker 2: Do any other living animals on the planet have feathers
Speaker 2: at arm?
Speaker 4: Birds? No living animals, okay, okay, yeah, So actually we
Speaker 4: used to think that that was one of the defining
Speaker 4: characteristics of birds, was feathers, but once they started finding
Speaker 4: feathers in all of these non avian dinosaurs, that became
Speaker 4: not true anymore. So now we know that feathers evolved
Speaker 4: long before birds did.
Speaker 2: And all birds are dinosaurs.
Speaker 4: All birds are dinosaurs. Yes, that is true.
Speaker 2: That still like rocks, me like living dinosaurs. So, okay,
Speaker 2: feathers now is a feather like a modified hair? What's happening?
Speaker 4: That's a great question. They're somewhat related to hair since
Speaker 4: that they're made out of keratin and they're you know,
Speaker 4: an external structure that grows out of the skin, but
Speaker 4: they're actually much more related to scales. So both feathers
Speaker 4: and hair are made out of keratin, but different kinds
Speaker 4: of keratin. There's this kind of keratin called alpha keratin
Speaker 4: that mostly makes up hairs and our fingernails and like
Speaker 4: mammalian structures, whereas beta keratin is what makes up bird
Speaker 4: feathers and actually more reptile scales and things like that.
Speaker 2: Okay, quick aside. Beta keratins are the proteins that make
Speaker 2: reptile and bird scale tough and waterproof. But they are
Speaker 2: not to be confused with beta carotene, which is a
Speaker 2: pigment that makes fruits and veggies orange. Now, beta keratin
Speaker 2: again is in birdy scales and beaks and claws and feathers,
Speaker 2: which evolved from scales. Imagine something like an alligator scale
Speaker 2: splintered into thousands of fluffy shreds selected through millions of years. Boom,
Speaker 2: you have feathers. Well you don't, but birds do.
Speaker 4: And feathers are such complex structures that we do think
Speaker 4: that they first started off as kind of very simple,
Speaker 4: almost hair like structure, and then evolved these more and
Speaker 4: more elaborate structures.
Speaker 2: And so do you think that they were more like quills,
Speaker 2: like a porcupine quill.
Speaker 4: No, they would have been soft. They would probably look
Speaker 4: a lot like fur.
Speaker 2: So a bunch of dinos had fur esque proto feathers
Speaker 2: and they were stomping around like big fuzzy muppets. And
Speaker 2: even before Archaeopteryx, which was a raven sized feathered avian
Speaker 2: dinosaur long considered history's first bird, feathers were all over
Speaker 2: the place in dinosaurs anyway, But the feathers came first,
Speaker 2: and then the flight.
Speaker 4: You know, feathers, you think of them as being really
Speaker 4: important for flight, which of course they are, but feathers
Speaker 4: of all long before flight did, so they actually didn't
Speaker 4: evolve for flight. They were co opted to be used
Speaker 4: in flight.
Speaker 2: So walk me through the anatomy of a feather. There's
Speaker 2: like the main shaft almost like a leaf has a vein,
Speaker 2: and then the ones off the side. What's going on?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a good question. So the main shaft we
Speaker 4: call that the racus, and so there's going to be
Speaker 4: this part that actually has all of these little branching
Speaker 4: structures and a part that's bare that's at the bottom,
Speaker 4: and that's what's going to be attached to the skin.
Speaker 4: You know, if you think of like a writing quill,
Speaker 4: that's where you would dip the ink in and use
Speaker 4: to write with. And so those little branching structures off
Speaker 4: of the main shaft we call those feather barbs. Oh,
Speaker 4: and each of those feather barbs actually has little branching
Speaker 4: shafts off of them. These are hard to see with
Speaker 4: the you know, your eye, but you actually can if
Speaker 4: you look really really closely, called barbules, and in many feathers,
Speaker 4: especially feathers that need to be strong, like flight feathers,
Speaker 4: the barbules also have these little tiny hooks that we
Speaker 4: call barbou cells that actually link them together. So think
Speaker 4: about if you find like a feather on the ground
Speaker 4: and you kind of break it, you know what I mean,
Speaker 4: Like you can split the different barbs and you can
Speaker 4: zip it back together. Yeah, And so that's actually because
Speaker 4: you're actually making those little hooklets reattached to each other.
Speaker 4: So that's how feathers maintain their shape. And they're like
Speaker 4: little belgrowy kind of a hook exactly just.
Speaker 2: Like that ash. Really cool in terms of functions of feathers,
Speaker 2: Can you walk me through some different varieties like a
Speaker 2: menu of feathers.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So feathers have many different functions, and one thing
Speaker 4: that makes them really interesting to study is that oftentimes
Speaker 4: they're doing these functions simultaneously. Let's think about this really
Speaker 4: complex structure and try and understand what it's doing and
Speaker 4: how it evolved. My specialty is in feather color evolution,
Speaker 4: and feather color itself has many different functions. So, for example,
Speaker 4: thermoregulation birds keeping warm. That's kind of one obvious use
Speaker 4: of feathers, and that.
Speaker 2: Just does that trap air so that it retains heat.
Speaker 4: Exactly, so it's like having this really warm air blanket
Speaker 4: right next to your skin. Basically, birds can actually control
Speaker 4: how warm they want to be by either fluffing themselves
Speaker 4: up or having the feathers be more flat. So if
Speaker 4: you think about like a really cold morning. I was
Speaker 4: in Boston for a really long time, and sometimes when
Speaker 4: it's snowing, you see bird outside and it looks like
Speaker 4: a little puffball, and that's because they're increasing how much
Speaker 4: warm are that they have next to their skin, which
Speaker 4: is pretty cool.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I had no idea they could do that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so they're like watch this, I mean to get cuter
Speaker 2: and warmer exactly.
Speaker 4: I'm adorable. I'm going to become almost a complete sphere.
Speaker 2: So they have a combination of down like an undercoat,
Speaker 2: and then do they have flight feathers on top of it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there are different types of feathers, So downy feathers
Speaker 4: are one type of feathers, and those feathers they don't
Speaker 4: have the central racus in the same way that what
Speaker 4: we call a contour feather, which is a body feather
Speaker 4: has or a flight feather would have. And they also
Speaker 4: don't have all the little hooklets that are going to
Speaker 4: be hooking their feather barbs and barbules together because they
Speaker 4: don't need to be hooked together. It's actually better for
Speaker 4: them to be more unorganized because they can trap air
Speaker 4: molecules more efficiently that way.
Speaker 2: So there are the contour or body feathers, the warm
Speaker 2: down feathers underneath, and then what other kind of feathers.
Speaker 4: There's another type of feathers that's really cool called richdal bristles.
Speaker 4: So if you ever looked really closely at a bird,
Speaker 4: like maybe there's a bird called a night jar, or
Speaker 4: a bird that is an insect eater like a flycatcher,
Speaker 4: you might see like little that almost looks like little
Speaker 4: hairs coming right around the bill, almost like whiskers kind of.
Speaker 4: And so these are special feathers that only have this
Speaker 4: central raykis. They don't actually have any barbs or bobules.
Speaker 4: And for a long time people didn't know what, you know,
Speaker 4: what's what are these feathers doing. But what they're probably
Speaker 4: doing is actually protecting the eyes of the bird.
Speaker 2: So really, yeah, so they can't hit themselves on things.
Speaker 4: Well more so, like little debris doesn't get in the eye,
Speaker 4: so when you're out chasing a bunch of bugs in
Speaker 4: the air, your eyes aren't getting you know, full of
Speaker 4: junk from the Oh my god. There are other birds
Speaker 4: that have crests or other very special feathers. So you know,
Speaker 4: we talked about thermoregulation is one use, but one of
Speaker 4: the other big uses of feathers, of course is signaling.
Speaker 4: And so whether that's being cryptic so you're trying to
Speaker 4: hide from predators. You know, think about like a kind
Speaker 4: of a brown bird that's maybe on the ground and
Speaker 4: hard to see, or to become more conspicuous, so they're
Speaker 4: actually trying to show off. And because plumage color is
Speaker 4: one of the things that bird can actually demonstrate its quality.
Speaker 4: So they actually use their color to attract mates, for example,
Speaker 4: or to fight off rivals. So you know, males instead
Speaker 4: of fighting over a territory or something like that, males
Speaker 4: will actually be able to just like look at some
Speaker 4: of these colored patches and decide, Oh, this guy's you know,
Speaker 4: not worth my time, or this guy's going to be
Speaker 4: a competitor. I better actually fight him. That's so judgy.
Speaker 3: That's amazing.
Speaker 2: They're looking each other up and down, like sizing each other.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, that's so petty. I love it. There's
Speaker 4: actually this really awesome bright orange birds and the males
Speaker 4: will actually there. They live in the rainforest in South America,
Speaker 4: and males will fight over patches of light and that's
Speaker 4: because they're all together in the same place. And then
Speaker 4: when the female comes, they'll all get in their little
Speaker 4: light patches and kind of jump around and try and
Speaker 4: get her to choose them.
Speaker 2: Oh my god. Like they each have spotlights on them exactly.
Speaker 2: So male birds are sometimes up in treetops just like
Speaker 2: having a Lady Gaga spotlight moment. How do they get
Speaker 2: into the treetops? Good question. Flight feathers of course, So
Speaker 2: how are birds achieving all of our wildest dreams and
Speaker 2: soaring through the air so casually? Well, folks, feathers, that's
Speaker 2: why we're all here. How are these flight feathers working.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So, one of the key aspects of a flight
Speaker 4: feather is that it's asymmetrical. And the way it works
Speaker 4: is that when air goes over these feathers and over
Speaker 4: the wing itself. Wings are not flat, they're kind of concave.
Speaker 4: The distance it has to travel going over the wing
Speaker 4: is shorter than it has to travel going under the wing.
Speaker 4: And so because of that, air molecules are going to
Speaker 4: try and fill that pressure differential that it creates, and
Speaker 4: actually that's going to create lyft and so part of
Speaker 4: that is actually the structure of these asymmetric feathers really yeah,
Speaker 4: and those feathers are probably the most constrained of all
Speaker 4: bird feathers. So you think about once you start looking
Speaker 4: at bird wings, you'll start noticing that, even though many
Speaker 4: other parts of the bird will be men different colors,
Speaker 4: like those feathers are never any other color. And that's
Speaker 4: because one of the types of pigments that color birds
Speaker 4: feathers melanin. Melanin is familiar. It's also what colors our
Speaker 4: hair and our skin. It's very common throughout the animal kingdom.
Speaker 4: It also provides strength for feathers, and so you're almost
Speaker 4: always see flight feathers. They're going to look almost identical
Speaker 4: I mean not completely, but much more than any other
Speaker 4: feather on the body. And that's because they're evolved to
Speaker 4: be so specifically tailored to be able to provide flight.
Speaker 2: Wow, and are they you? They're usually the darker ones
Speaker 2: on the bird exactly.
Speaker 4: Yep, So those that melanin gives them this kind of
Speaker 4: blackish brown color.
Speaker 2: Now, what about different color plumages? Like what range are
Speaker 2: we talking?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 2: Can they go everything from like opalescent to obviously black?
Speaker 2: Like what colors have you seen working in? Oh, feather,
Speaker 2: that's a great question. So one of my favorite topics
Speaker 2: for colors. Okay, birds can come in every color of
Speaker 2: the rainbow, including colors that we can't see. Really, yes,
Speaker 2: did you know that birds, other birds can see colors
Speaker 2: that we can't see. So birds can actually see ultraviolet colors,
Speaker 2: so they can't do that.
Speaker 4: Okay, so we can see If you think about what
Speaker 4: is color, it's actually wavelengths of light that are. We
Speaker 4: have cone cells in our eye that will you know,
Speaker 4: be activated or not by certain wavelengths, and that gets
Speaker 4: translated into our brain as a color. So we have
Speaker 4: three types of cones in our eyes that can see
Speaker 4: from about four hundred to seven hundred nanimeters. But birds
Speaker 4: actually have four types of cones in their eyes, so
Speaker 4: they have a whole other kind of cone, and that
Speaker 4: cone resides from about three hundred to four hundred nanimeters,
Speaker 4: so they can actually see from three hundred to seven
Speaker 4: hundred nanimeters.
Speaker 2: So there could be disco birds out there that we
Speaker 2: have no idea about.
Speaker 4: There could be I actually, you know, I brought a
Speaker 4: few birds out here with me, and one of the
Speaker 4: birds that I brought was this bird called a palm tanager.
Speaker 4: So this bird, you look at it, it looks it's
Speaker 4: pretty kind of grayish yellowish, not that exciting. But if
Speaker 4: you actually look at this plumage using what's called a
Speaker 4: reflectant spectro photometer, which is a machine that we use
Speaker 4: to actually objectively measure how much light is coming off
Speaker 4: of feathers at certain wavelengths, you can see that almost
Speaker 4: all of the reflectance is in the ultraviolet. So this
Speaker 4: bird would be much much brighter to a bird than
Speaker 4: it is to us.
Speaker 2: So it looks kind of like an olive color, like
Speaker 2: an army green, grayish color. Yeah, but it might be
Speaker 2: just holographic disco bird.
Speaker 4: I mean, probably not holographic disco bird, but it would
Speaker 4: be quite a bit brighter.
Speaker 2: Do you think it would be green in the green area,
Speaker 2: like greenish.
Speaker 4: Dub So UV is much more like purpleish.
Speaker 2: Okay. Yeah, how come there aren't more blue birds that
Speaker 2: would blend in with the sky? Oh?
Speaker 4: Good question. So part of that has to do with
Speaker 4: how blue is made. There are only two ways that
Speaker 4: birds can make colors. One is by refracting color off
Speaker 4: of the structure of their feathers. So that means when
Speaker 4: light comes in, certain wavelengths might be reflected based on
Speaker 4: how the feather molecules are shaped. And the other is
Speaker 4: based on pigments that absorb certain wavelengths of color.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, okay, So color can be straight up pigment
Speaker 2: or structural. Got it.
Speaker 4: So you know we talked about melanin, So browns and blacks,
Speaker 4: those are all melanin molecules. Melanin is a pigment that
Speaker 4: absorbs almost all wavelengths of light. There's a pigment called carotenoids,
Speaker 4: which is the other most common bird pigment. So this
Speaker 4: produces almost all oranges, yellows, and reds and birds. But
Speaker 4: blue and birds is not produced by pigment. It's produced
Speaker 4: by the feather structure. Oh okay, yeah, And so you
Speaker 4: know it might be harder to evolve a blue feather structure,
Speaker 4: for example.
Speaker 2: Ah, that's so interesting. I never knew that. Okay, So
Speaker 2: I look this up and it's almost like there's a
Speaker 2: spongy layer made of keratin and air that sits on
Speaker 2: top of a melanin la and it's the structure of
Speaker 2: that sponge that throws light in the blue range back. Now,
Speaker 2: iridescent colors have a few layers of melanin that scatter
Speaker 2: light depending on your angle to the sun and the feather. Now,
Speaker 2: all of this is happening deep in the teeny barbs
Speaker 2: and barbules to make up birds in all shapes and
Speaker 2: sizes and degrees of flamboyance.
Speaker 4: Can I just tell you a quick feather effect? That's so. Yes,
Speaker 4: there's like this really unknown but really cool species of
Speaker 4: bird called a sand grouse. So there's the species that
Speaker 4: lives in the desert. And actually the adult birds have
Speaker 4: very specialized belly feathers that hold water, and so they'll
Speaker 4: fly for like kilometers every day to the watering hole
Speaker 4: and soak their bellies and then fly back to their
Speaker 4: baby birds and bring them back these like you know,
Speaker 4: water so they can drink it. So they actually like
Speaker 4: drink the water from the belly of the adult bird. Oh's,
Speaker 4: and they're these really cool looking like spirally feathers if
Speaker 4: you look at them under a microscope.
Speaker 2: Okay, yes, so I look these up and instead of
Speaker 2: straight barbs, they're helical, kind of like a curly ribbon
Speaker 2: on some festive gift wrap. Just slurburnov water for the bibis.
Speaker 2: Now we're about to get to Patreon questions, so many
Speaker 2: good ones, but before we do, each week we donate
Speaker 2: to a charity of the ologists choosing, and this week
Speaker 2: Allison chose the Ornithological Council, which is at birdnet dot
Speaker 2: org slash oc. Now they do a lot of great
Speaker 2: work to connect ornithologists to the public, including with policymakers.
Speaker 2: They provide timely information about birds to help ensure scientifically
Speaker 2: based decisions and management actions. So a donation went to them,
Speaker 2: and that was made possible by sponsors of the show,
Speaker 2: which you may hear about. Now get value.
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Speaker 2: Okay, and now back to the feather questions that tickle
Speaker 2: your curiosity. Alison Terry wants to know do feathers really
Speaker 2: carry diseases?
Speaker 4: Birds do carry diseases, and certainly like contact is one
Speaker 4: of the ways that diseases get carried. So just like
Speaker 4: we carry diseases on our hands, I mean birds carry
Speaker 4: diseases on their feathers as well. Now, birds also have
Speaker 4: parasites they'll have lice, for example, and those can carry diseases.
Speaker 4: So it is true, you know, thinking about like you
Speaker 4: find a feather on a ground. Yeah, I'm not super
Speaker 4: worried about getting a disease from that, because most diseases
Speaker 4: from birds don't jump to humans, although that's not necessarily
Speaker 4: true westnel virus, for example. Maybe don't pick up a
Speaker 4: dead crow that you see, Okay, unless you're a museum.
Speaker 4: Unless you're a Museum's great.
Speaker 2: But now, the folks who ask that, by the bye
Speaker 2: were Melissa Vono, James Hoffstetler, Alison Tourri, Jessica Chamberlain, Kira Goin,
Speaker 2: and Jesse Dragon. And yes, I check that out. And
Speaker 2: I didn't know that west now virus is a mosquito
Speaker 2: transmitted disease that has corvids as a reservoir. That was
Speaker 2: news to me. Also, let's just make a pact right now.
Speaker 2: Let's not pick up too much dead stuff right now.
Speaker 2: Let's keep your hands clean, all right, agreed, appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Are there certain seasons where you're bound to find more
Speaker 2: feathers on the ground.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, definitely, during I would say transitional times. You
Speaker 4: know a lot of birds will some birds molt in
Speaker 4: the fall. Some birds molt kind of in the spring
Speaker 4: before breeding season. Generally you won't find many feathers during
Speaker 4: the breeding season because birds don't want to do expensive
Speaker 4: things like feeding young and molt at the same time.
Speaker 2: Oh and by the bye, when a feather is molted,
Speaker 2: how does a new one come in? Well, it grows
Speaker 2: in as a pin feather or a blood feather, and
Speaker 2: it looks like a spike, and it's filled with blood
Speaker 2: to help it grow, and birds have to nip and
Speaker 2: preen a keratin sheath off of it as it grows.
Speaker 2: So bird owners, you got to look out for pokey
Speaker 2: pin feathers as they grow in. Also understandably, pin feathers
Speaker 2: a little sore, a little out sheet. Tanaysha Bruno wants
Speaker 2: to know why do birds grow feathers as opposed to
Speaker 2: fur or hair.
Speaker 4: That's a great question, and that's due to evolutionary history.
Speaker 4: So hair and fur evolved in the lineage of mammals,
Speaker 4: which of course branched off from the common relative of
Speaker 4: both birds and mammals long before either hair or feathers existed.
Speaker 4: So it's you never know what evolution's going to come
Speaker 4: up with, but you know, in the case of mammals,
Speaker 4: it came up with fur, and in the case of dinosaurs,
Speaker 4: actually it came up with feathers, and these proto feathers
Speaker 4: because before they came the complex feathers that we know
Speaker 4: of today.
Speaker 2: So just roll of the DNA mutation dice, I would say,
Speaker 2: so Mo Casey first time question answer wants to know
Speaker 2: how waterproof feathers work. Primarily on puffins because they are
Speaker 2: the cutest, but other waterproof verbs are good.
Speaker 4: Too, So that's yeah. So most feathers on birds are
Speaker 4: waterproof to some extent. You know, on bird like a
Speaker 4: puffin or even a penguin that spends a lot of time,
Speaker 4: there'll be certain density that's going to make it very
Speaker 4: difficult for water to go in. So in a bird,
Speaker 4: you know, kind of an on the opposite side of things,
Speaker 4: a bird called an anhinga, for example, this is a
Speaker 4: bird that dives underwater that actually has very dense barbs
Speaker 4: and feather barbules, and so this actually helps them to
Speaker 4: dive down because they don't have all the air trapped,
Speaker 4: but because water will get in. Then you see them
Speaker 4: standing with their wings outstretched, and so cormorants will do
Speaker 4: this sometimes too, and so they're actually drying themselves up.
Speaker 2: Oh, Robin Kyun wants to know what is up with
Speaker 2: emu feathers and they're double feathers. Do EMUs have double feathers?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so that the double feathers a feather called an
Speaker 4: after feather. So that's just true if some birds. Some
Speaker 4: birds have that, and this is especially true of birds
Speaker 4: that are flight so EMUs, for example, they can't fly right,
Speaker 4: same with cassawerries, kiwis ostriches. Once you lose that flight constraint,
Speaker 4: your feathers can do a lot more things because you
Speaker 4: don't have to worry about being aerodynamic anymore or having
Speaker 4: these flight feathers, so then they can evolve. You know,
Speaker 4: a lot of them have lost their hooklets that hook
Speaker 4: them together. You know, think about like an emu plumage.
Speaker 4: They're pretty furry looking. Yeah, it's kind of like hairy.
Speaker 4: And so that's just because they don't have to fly anymore,
Speaker 4: so they can use their feathers for other things.
Speaker 2: Lena fe First, my question asker wants to know when
Speaker 2: doing stuff like mating dances, how much fine motor control
Speaker 2: do birds have over their feathers, Like can they move
Speaker 2: clusters or does it just look like it.
Speaker 4: That's a good question. So birds do have actually pretty
Speaker 4: fine control over their feathers, not really over individual feathers,
Speaker 4: but they can control what are called feather tracks. So
Speaker 4: feathers don't continuously cover a bird's body. I mean they
Speaker 4: do when they're all spread out, but the way feathers
Speaker 4: are grown in specific regions of a bird's body, and
Speaker 4: so they'll be like these, just like she said, kind
Speaker 4: of clusters of feathers that they can control together so.
Speaker 2: They can move them around. Oh yeah, okay, Miranda Panda
Speaker 2: wants to know which bird has the longest feather recorded.
Speaker 4: As far as so in terms of any feather. There
Speaker 4: are breeds of chicken where they have actually you know,
Speaker 4: bred them to have these incredibly long tails. So I
Speaker 4: don't remember exactly along those I want to say, something
Speaker 4: like five feet long.
Speaker 2: Okay. Side note, After this interview, we went to the
Speaker 2: bird hall and I saw this rooster with maybe an
Speaker 2: eight foot tail, and of course I took a picture.
Speaker 2: And also some of these long tailed fowl can sport
Speaker 2: a party in the back up to fourteen meters or
Speaker 2: forty five to fifty feet long and their breeders have
Speaker 2: to roost them in these special sleeping arm wars so
Speaker 2: they don't tangle up at night because they grow like
Speaker 2: a meter or so a year. Can you imagine stepping
Speaker 2: on your own feather tail? I don't even want to
Speaker 2: think about bird doodoo in a thirty five foot long
Speaker 2: feather train. What about the coolest thing about feathers? Like,
Speaker 2: what's the neatest like what just like gets you up
Speaker 2: in the morning.
Speaker 4: I just think, you know, thinking about the fact that
Speaker 4: my job is to understand why birds are the color
Speaker 4: that they are. I mean, how cool is that?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 4: Just think about colorful birds? Why are birds this incredible
Speaker 4: rainbow of you know, iridescent colors, browns, blacks. We just
Speaker 4: described a new type of plumage called super black plumage,
Speaker 4: which is like where the way that the barbules are
Speaker 4: shaped will actually collect more light than just regular feathers. Wow,
Speaker 4: the barbules instead of just being flat, they're actually thicker
Speaker 4: and pointed at about a forty degree angle, and that
Speaker 4: that angle actually captures more light than just.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, it is really velvety.
Speaker 4: It's so pretty.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for talking.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's been really fun my pleasure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so ask smart people stupid questions. Okay. So to
Speaker 2: learn more about Satural History Museum in Valley County, you
Speaker 2: can visit NAHM dot org. I love them and to
Speaker 2: follow Alison. She is at aj Schultz six point twenty
Speaker 2: two on Twitter and her website is Alisonshultz dot com
Speaker 2: and I will link those in the show notes. More
Speaker 2: links to videos we talked about and references from each
Speaker 2: episode are always up at Aliward dot com on each
Speaker 2: individual episode page. We are at ologies on Twitter and Instagram.
Speaker 2: I'm at Aliward with one L on both. Also linked
Speaker 2: is aliward dot com slash Asmologies, which has dozens more
Speaker 2: kids safe and shorter episodes you can blaze through. And
Speaker 2: thank you Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio and Shared Sleeper
Speaker 2: of mindgem Media for editing those, as well as Zeke
Speaker 2: Rodriguez Thomas. And since we like to keep things small
Speaker 2: around here, the rest of the credits are in the
Speaker 2: show notes and at the end of the episode, I
Speaker 2: tell you a piece of advice, and this week it's
Speaker 2: that if you find a feather, you happen upon a feather.
Speaker 2: What I like to do is glue the tip of it,
Speaker 2: or tape the tip of it onto a pen I
Speaker 2: already have because it makes writing, for some reason, way
Speaker 2: more fun just writing with a big feather pen. Even
Speaker 2: if it's just a turkey feather that you found, you
Speaker 2: might want to spray it with a little bit of
Speaker 2: lysol or something ahead of time. But yeah, I have
Speaker 2: a couple pens that are feathers that I found in
Speaker 2: my backyard. All right, my little berties, Bye bye Sages.
Speaker 3: At Saugyo.
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