It is said that art comes from life, which is obviously not fiction. There must be some rumors about this kind of bird in reality. Although it is impossible for birds without feet to exist in nature (birds evolved from dinosaurs and dinosaurs had feet), there are two kinds of birds in nature, either their habits or their names, which is more in line with this statement. These two kinds of birds are swift and bird of paradise.

Swift, the rootless bird?

Swift is a common bird, but strictly speaking, it is not a swallow, because swallows are the general name of all birds in Raphanaceae, including domestic swallows and Jin Yan. Swift is the floorboard of all Swift family birds, including 84 different species. The biggest difference between them and real swallows is their wings. The length of swallows' wings is similar to their body length, but the length of swift's wings is about twice their body length. Their similarity.

Longer wings also give Swift stronger flying ability, such as the sharp-tailed Swift, whose average flying speed can reach 170km/h and the fastest can reach 352 km/h, which is comparable to high-speed rail. In addition to flying speed, Swift is also a leader in the bird world in terms of flying distance. Beijing Swift needs to fly from China to distant Africa for the winter every year, and the one-way trip exceeds 16000km.

Some people say that Swifts are good at flying, but it is also tragic, because from the moment they learn to fly, they almost never land, and they have to fly hundreds of thousands of kilometers in their lives until they die, which is why Swifts are called "rootless birds". And Swifts mostly belong to Swift family. The scientific name of Swift is Apus, which means a bird without feet in Greek.

So, has Swift really been flying all his life? The answer is close, but not absolute. Once, an ornithologist used a radar positioning system to track a swift that had just learned to fly. As a result, Swift did not land for almost two years, preying on flying insects from the air and drinking water with the method of "dragonfly water".

As for rest, they adopted a helpless but very suitable method-hemispheric sleep, which simply means that the left and right brains interact during rest, work while resting, and then replace it. Many mammals living in water, such as dolphins, rest in this way to avoid drowning.

So, why does Swift live so tired? The answer lies in the shape of its claws.

However, this claw structure of Swift is somewhat special. The distance between its toes is too close. Although one toe can be turned backwards, the angle formed by the whole paw is still very small, which makes Swift only suitable for grasping small objects, and the distance between toes is too small to support them to stand on the ground.

Therefore, Swifts hardly land after learning to fly, and because of the particularity of claws, they usually only have a short rest on the rock wall or rock wall, and even mating can only be in the air, and only when hatching and brooding will they fall into the nest.

So Swift won't fall to the ground, just occasionally take a simple rest and stay on some rough and vertical objects.

"rootless bird" bird of paradise?

Birds of paradise are also called birds of paradise. Its name actually comes from a misunderstanding that once people thought they just had no feet. Birds of paradise are all birds of passeriformes. Birds in this family are very long. The largest black sickle-billed bird of paradise can reach 1. 1 m and weigh 350g, while the smallest Wang Feng bird is only15cm and weighs 50g.

Of course, no matter what kind of bird of paradise it is, it has legs and feet, and its name actually comes from the misunderstanding of Europeans. As early as the middle of18th century, a Swiss explorer went to Indonesia and bought a bird specimen in the market. He bought this specimen because it was strange. It has no wings and feet.

So he took the specimen back to Europe. When people see this bird, they think it can fly without wings, but it can't land for life. It only flies in the sky all its life, it flies towards the sun, and its destination is heaven, which is the paradise in the west, so it gets the names of birds of paradise and birds of paradise.

Of course, as the descendants of birds and dinosaurs, all birds have feet and wings, and even flightless birds like ostriches and penguins have obvious wings. The reason why the specimens of birds of paradise lost these two important organs was that people used their wings and feet as decorations and had cut them off, but explorers at that time didn't know.

There are 4 1 species of birds of paradise in existence. They are omnivorous birds in tropical forests of eastern Indonesia, Torres Strait Islands, Papua New Guinea and eastern Australia. They mainly feed on fruits, but also prey on insects and other arthropods.

The male feathers of birds of paradise are beautiful, while the female feathers are unpretentious. However, the bird of paradise cannot find a mate with this feather alone. Most people need a courtship field, that is, sweeping a clearing on the ground to attract the opposite sex with songs. The cleaner you clean, the easier it is for male birds of paradise to win the favor of the opposite sex.

And some birds of paradise, such as birds of paradise and birds of six lines belonging to the Portuguese genus, not only have to clean the courtship field, but also perform a difficult courtship dance, which is very difficult, similar to our common ballet. A male bird must perform correctly in order to get the right to mate.