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Birds keep a layer of soft, fluffy down feathers to regulate body temperature
Feathers are a sleek, intricate evolutionary innovation that makes flight possible for birds, but in addition to their stiff, aerodynamic feathers used for flight, birds also keep a layer of soft, fluffy down feathers between their bodies and their outermost feathers to regulate body temperature.
Using the Smithsonian s collection of 625,000 bird specimens, Sahas Barve, a Peter Buck Fellow at the Smithsonian s National Museum of Natural History, led a new study to examine feathers across 249 species of Himalayan songbirds, finding that birds living at higher elevations have more of the fluffy down the type of feathers humans stuff their jackets with than birds from lower elevations.
Language, Culture, Storytelling ! Welcome to The Mother Tongue Film Festival Published February 15th, 2021 - 11:26 GMT
Mother Tongue Film festival (Twitter)
Highlights
Featuring 45 films in 39 languages from all over the world, the festival “opens on the United Nations’ International Mother Language Day, February 21, and runs through May.”
The Smithsonian Institute’s Recovering Voices initiative offers global audiences a film festival online that centres around “language, culture and the power of storytelling” and features 45 films in 39 languages.
The Smithsonian’s Recovering Voices (RV) initiative was founded in 2009. It is “a collaborative program of the National Museum of Natural History, the National Museum of the American Indian, and the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage that partners with communities around the world to revitalise and sustain endangered languages and knowledge.”
A new study examines feathers across 249 species of Himalayan songbirds, finding that birds at higher elevations have more of fluffy down than lower elevation birds. Finding such a clear pattern across many species underscores how important feathers are to birds ability to adapt to their environments. Furthermore, finding that birds from colder environments tend to have more down may one day help predict which birds are vulnerable to climate change simply by studying feathers.