Out and About With Our Twootz.com Customers

What would you say if I told you prehistoric birds knew how to fly before they ever got off the ground? I know, it makes no sense, but according to researchers in the US, the "first bird", the Archaeopteryx, may not have been as special as we previously thought.

Using CT scanners and all manner of technical wizardry, scientists have mapped out the skulls and brains of modern birds and located the unique characteristics, the neural programming if you will, that lets them fly.

Our friend Archaeopteryx was thought to be the first bird to have these characteristics, but new discoveries have shown many flightless birds of the prehistoric era shared these characteristics, even ones that predated poor Archaeopteryx.

If that wasn't enough, it transpires it's not just the characteristics of the long-lost bird-brains that intrigue the scientific community, but their size too! Professor Gabriel Bever, of the New York Institute of Technology, said: 'The story of brain size is more than its relationship to body size.'

'If we also consider how the different regions of the brain changed relative to each other, we can gain insight into what factors drove brain evolution as well as what developmental mechanisms facilitated those changes.'

Food for thought...

Well, the weather finally broke, which gave us all a nice reprieve and a chance to cool off, but keep these bird-baths topped up! The sun might be in hiding but the temperature will still make your bird-baths a favoured watering hole to your local avian population.