It's a mystery why the speed and complexity of evolution appear to increase with time. For example, the fossil record indicates that single-celled life first appeared about 3.5 billion years ago, and it then took about 2.5 billion more years for multi-cellular life to evolve. That leaves just a billion years or so for the evolution of the diverse menagerie of plants, mammals, insects, birds and other species that populate the earth.

Birds use them to reduce the weight of their feathers. Polar bears rely on them to keep warm in the Arctic cold. Now scientists in China report what they believe to be the first easy, straightforward method for making the kind of multi-channel microtubes found in birds, polar bears and other animals.

The chestnut-capped piha is an unassuming robin-sized bird restricted to a few tiny remnant forest patches in the Antioquia Department of Colombia, in the Central Cordillera of the Andes. It is so restricted in its distribution that it evaded discovery until 1999, and has been identified by the Alliance for Zero Extinction as a priority conservation species.

Birds with brains that are large in relation to their body size have a lower mortality rate than those with smaller brains, according to new research published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences today.

Harmful levels of neurotoxin are detected in fish and birds