Unlike most modern birds, the flightless group that includes ostriches and emus can’t move their upper beaks – a feature that, for the past 155 years, has been considered primitive.

Birds that have cone-shaped beaks have the ability to trap a seed, thanks to a special groove in their beaks, and crack it open. Using their tongues, these birds then nimbly separate the seed from ...

Beak shape and nest material use in birds. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2023; 378 (1884) DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2022.0147 ...

Young explains that the swinging birds exerted as much force on their beaks as a swinging gibbon does on its arm, if not more. “So from a limb-loading perspective, 100 percent they are like ...

The material a bird selects for its nest depends on the dimensions of its beak, according to researchers. Using data on nest materials for nearly 6,000 species of birds, a team based at the ...