Why can t some birds fly? Why do birds fly

There are no strange things in the world, and there are indeed flightless birds in nature: ostriches running in the deserts of Africa; penguins walking on the ice sheets of Antarctica; Kiwi, a wingless bird living in New Zealand. However, compared to the birds that can fly, those that cannot fly are only a minority.

After all, flying is a powerful tool for animals to escape. If a hungry lion sneaks up on the little antelope, the little one can only run as hard as he can. But if it is an old cat that pounces on the Archaeopteryx lives in the woods and hunts insects for a living.

Between the branches, it flies towards the sparrow, which can fly vertically into the air, just a few meters away from the cat's walk. 's hunting range. There are many other benefits of being able to fly:

It is possible to go far away to find food, instead of being able to move around the nest like those flightless animals; It is also possible to set up your home on a high place, which is out of the range of most predators. Flying is the second great revolution in the evolution of birds. There are 8,500 different species of birds, compared to 4,000 species of mammals.

The most successful ones are insects, which have millions of species, but most of them are also capable of flying. If the ability to fly is essential for survival, why can't some birds fly? Scientists believe that these birds also had the ability to fly at first, but later lost this ability for a variety of reasons.

The earliest bird fossils found by humans are about 100 million years old, and scientists call them "Archaeopteryx". Its appearance may look quite ferocious, as not only does it have sharp teeth, but it also has claws on its wings. By studying its bone structure, scientists have speculated that the bird probably only glides.

Archaeopteryx, like most birds today, evolved from dinosaurs. Scientists speculate that some of the baby dinosaurs may have had feathers on their bodies to keep them warm. Some of these dinosaurs had special forelimbs that allowed them to flutter over a short distance.

Later, in a fortuitous mutation, the forelimbs turned into wings – a significant advantage for survival. Birds soon spread to all corners of the planet. Some of the birds that once made their home on islands, such as Madagascar and New Zealand, are now extinct.

But it is also on these islands that flightless birds appear. Usually these islands have an excellent living environment, and the birds find that they can get by without having to fly. There are no predators, no voracious predators, and with plenty of food, birds with small and weak wings can just as well live.

Over time, their ranks grew, for example, ostriches could not fly, their wings were pitifully small compared to their bodies, and they had no real flight muscles. Although ostriches have survived to this day, some flightless birds have not escaped extinction, such as the dodo, which once lived on islands in the Indian Ocean. Later, wild boars often stole their eggs, and with human predation, the dodo finally disappeared from the face of the earth.

Birds are distinguished from other living vertebrates because they can fly, but anyone who has ever seen an ostrich knows that not all birds can fly. So why can't some birds fly anymore? Were there flightless birds in ancient times?

In fact, although flying brings great convenience to the life of birds, it is also very physically demanding, so once the survival pressure of birds is reduced, they are easy to "lazy" and do not want to fly. From the known fossil record, as early as the late Cretaceous, some birds that lost their ability to fly appeared already. It was only in the Cenozoic Era, 65 million years later, when the traditional dinosaurs completely disappeared, that many huge birds appeared on the earth and completely lost their ability to fly.

50 million 40 million years ago, birds were the most powerful carnivores on land at that time. During this period, large mammals mostly ate plants, and meat-eating mammals were too small compared to these large birds. At that time, the birds that dominated the land generally had extremely vestigial wings and were incapable of flight, but they had well-developed legs, were able to hunt down prey quickly, and usually had large heads and terrible beaks.

Most of these terrifying bird fossils have been found in Europe and the Americas, such as the Gaston bird. However, since the 80s of the 20th century, the fossilized skeleton of a large carnivorous bird has also been unearthed in Henan, China. Scientists named it the Central Plains Bird according to its origin, and the age is about 50 million years ago.

This means that some of the large, ferocious birds once roamed the land of ancient China.

However, flightless birds are not all fierce predators, and some giant birds are actually very gentle. Flying and not being able to fly is actually an adaptation, but one thing seems to be certain, once the bird's flight organs have deteriorated, it is impossible to fly again. <>

Refers to birds that have lost the ability to fly and whose wings have deteriorated, and have been replaced by the ability to run and swim. That said, it is widely believed that they all evolved from a common ancestor who knew how to fly. There are about 40 species of flightless birds, including well-known species such as penguins, ostriches and sandpipers, and some of them belonging to other orders.

With the exception of large, flightless birds such as ostriches and emus, which still have strong claws against predators, most flightless birds are faced with environments with few predators, or isolated islands, where flying with great effort is not effective, and therefore they have an evolutionary tendency to lose this ability.

The reason why birds can fly is that birds have a unique physiological structure. They have a pair of wings full of feathers, when winged, the outer feathers cover the inner edge of the adjacent feathers, each feather has a slight rotation ability, and the two wings are constantly flapping up and down, creating a huge downward pressure resistance, so that they can fly forward quickly. <

The reason why birds can fly is that birds have a unique physiological structure. They have a pair of wings full of feathers, when winged, the outer feathers cover the inner edge of the adjacent feathers, each feather has a slight rotation ability, and the two wings are constantly flapping up and down, creating a huge downward pressure resistance, so that they can fly forward quickly.

Birds can fly for the following reasons:1. Birds fly by wings, not only to have wings but also to have developed muscles in the chest, which can pull the wing bones to carry out strong movement, so that the wings are flapped and the power of flight is generated.

2. Birds flapping their wings can not only make their bodies rise into the air, but also make them move forward and land smoothly.

3. The body of the bird is relatively light, the bones are very slender, and most of the bones are filled with air. Such a skeletal structure provides superior conditions for flight.

1. The structure of various organs of birds tends to lose weight, enhance flight ability, and enable birds to fly. 2. The feathers of birds are streamlined when flying, and they receive the least resistance when moving in the air, which is conducive to flying. 3. When flying, the wings will stir up the airflow, which will produce downward pressure resistance, so that the birds can fly forward quickly.

4. The bones of birds are thin and light, and the bones are hollow and filled with air, which helps in flight. 5. The lungs of birds are spongy and have 9 air sacs. After absorbing air during flight, part of it is used to exchange carbon and oxygen directly in the lungs, and the other part is stored in the air sac first, and then excreted through the lungs, so that the birds have enough oxygen during flight.

The complexity of the structure of the wings of birds is by no means inferior to that of the birds themselves. If the feathers of the wings are constructed, they can skillfully use the aerodynamic principle to transport the air, and when they fan up and down or lift up and down, they can push the air and fly forward using the reaction principle; The structure of the feather is reasonable, which can effectively reduce the air resistance encountered during flight, and some can also play a role in cavity loss to remove tremor and noise. There are great differences in the wings of various species of birds, so that the difference in wings alone creates many excellent and average "pilots".

In addition to the bird with the word chicken can't fly, there are also penguins can't fly, maybe most people don't know that penguins are also birds, but in fact it does, but the fact that it can't fly is easy to figure out, just its clumsy body and heavy steps, if it can fly, there will be ghosts. <>

Penguins are the least like birds, they have wings, but their wings are short and strong, and the bodies of the birds that can fly are soft, and if you look closely, the higher the birds usually fly, the longer their wings, such as eagles, so it is normal for penguins not to fly, what you can see is that they flutter on the water with their bulky wings. Penguins can't fly in fact, to some extent, it also reflects the theory of "survival of the fittest" in evolution, their living environment and natural enemies, as well as the prey they catch, are really vast and misty on the ice and in the deep sea, their food is not in the sky, and over time, their wings will naturally degenerate, becoming such a thick form, the little fat in their bodies has begun to accumulate because of the climate, just this weight, think about how big wings can support them to fly. <>

More surprising than cockroaches can fly is that kiwi birds can't fly, kiwi birds are the national bird of New Zealand, their body is very small, their beaks are long, the appearance is simple and cute, generally speaking, it is impossible for birds with relatively small bodies to fly without splitting rent, but what people didn't expect is that kiwi birds look like birds, but do not do bird things. <>

It should be noted that although they are small and look very much like birds, they have no wings, and their strength is still very small, basically there is no resistance, they will only run away when they encounter natural enemies, and their legs are still slow. The reason why they can't fly is also because of evolution, their sense of smell is very sensitive, they can easily eat insects in the soil, since they can get food so easily, so why evolve wings, and naturally they will be abolished.

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Hello, birds can fly for the reasons below, 1The feather structure of the bird's wings can skillfully use the principle of aerodynamics, which can push the air when fanning and use the reaction force to fly forward; 2.Bird bones are lightweight materials, hollow, and lightweight; 3.

There are many air sacs in the bird's body that are connected to the lungs, and Lu Hu reduces the weight of his own shirt and increases buoyancy.