Gravity-defying Bird Beak Mystery Solved: Shorebirds Benefit From Surface Tension

As Charles Darwin showed nearly 150 years ago, bird beaks are exquisitely adapted to the birds' feeding strategy. A team of mathematicians and engineers has now explained exactly how some shorebirds use their long, thin beaks to defy gravity and transport food into their mouths. Some species rely exclusively on a feeding mechanism that takes advantage of water's surface tension, and so are extremely vulnerable to oil spills.

Read the whole article on Science Daily

More from Science Daily