• Question: what was the first bird to be born and how did it learn how to fly

    Asked by to Helen on 16 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Helen Gath

      Helen Gath answered on 16 Jun 2014:

      This is quite a big question actually, because it really is about evolution. The world we live in did not reach the point of complexity overnight. It took time to develop and evolve, and when I say time, I literally mean millions of years! It is always changing and growing and getting better at what it does, adapting to the changes around it so that it can keep on surviving.

      For example, lets look at primates (monkeys). Hundred of years ago their ancestors may not have had tails like we see on many monkeys today. But a slight ‘hiccup’ in the growth of an animal may have meant it was born with a short stump. This could have helped the monkey balance much better than it’s friends who didn’t have tails. Better balance would have been an advantage; it could move faster and escape from predators and had more chances of surviving. As this unusual trait turns out to be useful, it retains the stump when it breeds and it’s offspring are likely to have a stump as well. This makes them very successful and they have babies with stumps as well. Over many years and generations, the monkey’s with the longest tails are more successful and this feature becomes increasingly common, until one day, every monkey has a long tail. Archaeologists look for fossils (the very old bones of animals in the ground) to help tell us this story of evolution. Often you hear the term ‘survival of the fittest’. Nature selects for features in an animal that give it the greatest chance of surviving.

      How BIRDS developed wings is a similar situation. Over time they slowly evolved wings. This would have been a very slow process over many years, but they would have noticed the benefits through experimental flying and trial and error. I imagine flying was’t easy at first. The story of bird evolution, and how they grew wings, is very unusual. Most other animals have left so many fossils they tell a clear story of their history and evolution. Birds, however, do not seem to have left us any clues! So the topic of avian evolution is very interesting among scientists – everyone has lots of different theories but we don’t have that much evidence!

Comments

  • Photo: Ekbal

    Ekbal commented on :

    Hi,
    As Helen explained very nicely, the evolution of birds and the ability to fly was very slow indeed.

    I should point out that there were flying animals well before birds. There were flying reptiles called Pterosaurs around for millions of years before the first birds. Also, we now know that many dinosaurs had feathers on their bodies, just like birds. But they probably weren’t able to fly.

    The first actual bird that we know of was called Archaeopteryx and first came about during a time called the Jurassic period about 150 million years ago. It had wings, feathers and tail much like birds today. But scientists think it probably couldn’t fly like the birds we know. It was probably more of a glider and used to float from one tree to another.

    However slowly, through evolution these birds learnt how to flap their wings and to fly and turned into the birds we know today.