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Feathers from five North American species revealed that some birds release heat upward through open air more effectively than others.<\/p>\n
Thomas Lee at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA<\/a>) demonstrated that bobwhites emit more heat than closely related species.<\/p>\n That contrast held even when the birds appeared similar in visible color, separating how feathers look from how they handle energy.<\/p>\n The narrow range across most species limits sweeping conclusions, but it establishes a measurable pathway that invites closer comparison.<\/p>\n Invisible colors and infrared heat<\/p>\n Visible shades told only part of the story because much of the sun\u2019s energy arrives outside the band humans notice.<\/p>\n The team tracked near-infrared sunlight<\/a> because feathers can reflect it without changing how a bird looks.<\/p>\n The researchers also measured mid-infrared, heat emitted by warm bodies, which matters when exposed birds lose energy upward through clear air.<\/p>\n As a result, two birds can appear nearly identical yet gain solar heat and shed warmth at different rates.<\/p>\n Birds handle heat by region<\/p>\n Across several species, warmer places often matched feathers that took in less of the sun\u2019s total energy.<\/p>\n Lower absorptance, the share of incoming radiation a surface keeps, reduces heat loading before a bird starts active cooling.<\/p>\n Song sparrows from southern California deserts showed the lowest solar uptake, while Iowa bobwhites absorbed more than birds from Mexico or Florida.<\/p>\n Earlier bird research<\/a> showed that near-infrared reflection can protect birds from heat, and these regional patterns sharpen that picture.<\/p>\n Similar birds manage heat differently<\/p>\n Bobwhites mattered for another reason, because visible color failed to predict how their feathers handled hidden wavelengths.<\/p>\n Birds from Iowa, Florida, and southern Mexico, looked similar to human eyes, yet their total solar uptake split once invisible light entered.<\/p>\n Such a mismatch suggests plumage can preserve camouflage while changing heat management, a useful trait in exposed grasslands and prairies.<\/p>\n Under open sky, small optical tweaks could matter even when feathers do not look different.<\/p>\n Open sky helps heat escape<\/p>\n Open habitats made bobwhites especially revealing because grassland birds spend long stretches with nothing above them but sky.<\/p>\n Under those conditions, heat can escape through an atmospheric window<\/a>, wavelengths that pass readily through air, instead of returning immediately.<\/p>\n With no roof, branches, or cliff overhead, some body heat leaves upward toward the colder sky rather than staying near the bird.<\/p>\n Sky exposure becomes a real selective pressure, though the study was too small to measure its exact strength.<\/p>\n Black birds handle heat differently<\/p>\n Common ravens complicated the story because birds that looked equally black did not handle sunlight in the same way.<\/p>\n Their subspecies, regionally distinct populations within one species, showed different near-infrared uptake even when human vision saw almost no difference.<\/p>\n Warm-region ravens absorbed more total sunlight than cooler-region ravens, even though both groups looked black to human eyes.<\/p>\n Seen that way, dark plumage does not carry one fixed thermal cost across an entire species.<\/p>\n Dark bird feathers are not always hot<\/p>\n Dark feathers do not automatically overheat a bird, because where absorbed energy sits can matter as much as total load.<\/p>\n Older plumage<\/a> studies showed that wind and feather structure can strongly change how much absorbed solar heat reaches skin.<\/p>\n Warm-climate ravens may therefore absorb more sunlight without paying the same penalty a simpler color rule would predict.<\/p>\n Heat biology, then, depends on wind, behavior, and feather structure as well as shade and air temperature.<\/p>\n Limits of measurement<\/p>\n The study stayed preliminary because measuring whole birds pushed instruments designed for cleaner, flatter, man-made materials.<\/p>\n Many populations had only three specimens, and separating single feathers produced misleading readings instead of a bird\u2019s true surface behavior.<\/p>\n One check found an intact song sparrow<\/a> back gave a reading nearly three times that of one loose feather.<\/p>\n Still, those limits show why museum collections can answer questions that fieldwork alone cannot easily reach.<\/p>\n Bird feathers inspire cooling technology<\/p>\n The payoff reaches beyond bird biology because feather optics could guide materials that stay cooler without pumps or power.<\/p>\n \u201cA \u2018hot\u2019 topic in thermal engineering is to create passively cooling structures,\u201d said Lee recently.<\/p>\n That combination of reflected sunlight and emitted heat makes feathers attractive models for passive cooling design.<\/p>\n Conservation also stands to gain, since hidden thermal traits may help forecast which populations can handle hotter days.<\/p>\n A new role for bird feathers <\/p>\n Bird plumage<\/a> now looks less like decoration and more like climate equipment, tuned across color, sunlight, and escaping heat.<\/p>\n Feather color still matters, but hidden heat traits add another layer to how birds meet their climates.<\/p>\n That extra layer may guide better conservation forecasts and smarter cooling materials, while reminding researchers how much remains unseen.<\/p>\n The study is published in the journal Integrative Organismal Biology<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n Like what you read?\u00a0Subscribe to our newsletter<\/a>\u00a0for engaging articles, exclusive content, and the latest updates.<\/p>\n Check us out on\u00a0EarthSnap<\/a>, a free app brought to you by\u00a0Eric Ralls<\/a>\u00a0and Earth.com.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scientists have measured for the first time how bird feathers send body heat toward space, identifying northern bobwhite…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":554298,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[49,48,66],"class_list":["post-554297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=554297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554297\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/554298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}