Without hands, some birds wing it with their feet

For the ability to soar among the clouds, birds made an evolutionary compromise: when their forelimbs became wings, they no longer had the option of using those limbs to eat, build homes, and care for their young. Many species opted to use their beak for those tasks instead. But some birds also evolved to be “pedal dexterous”—able to accomplish with their feet tasks that other animals undertake with nimble hands. Now, researchers have finally discovered where that handy trait got its roots: in a common ancestor of parrots and raptors that lived in trees more than 60 million years ago. The research, published today in Communications Biology , shows that nature found “a remarkable end-around,” says Stephen Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh who wasn’t involved in the study, “Evolution [has] molded the feet of birds into multipurpose tools that … almost become pseudo-hands,” he says. Cristián Gutiérrez-Ibáñez, a neurobiologist and bird researcher at the University of Alberta and the lead author of the study, had initially planned to track down the origins of pedal dexterity in birds by observing and comparing multiple species in captivity. But then COVID-19 struck, and campus lockdowns made that impossible. So, he and colleagues turned to the plethora of amateur and professional bird images available on social media and in online repositories. “People really love taking pictures of birds,” h...
Source: ScienceNOW - Category: Science Source Type: news