Animals can instantly exhibit versatile behaviors in response to their circumstances to
survive in harsh natural environments. For example, many animals chase prey, escape from …

The neck is a critical portion of the avian spine, one that works in tandem with the beak to act
as a surrogate forelimb and allows birds to manipulate their surroundings despite the lack of …

Animals tend to decrease in body size (Bergmann's rule) and elongate appendages (Allen's
rule) in warm climates. However, it is unknown whether these patterns depend on each …

Some birds' necks show excellent flexible bending ability, which can be mimicked to design
bionic robot. The main challenge is how to deal with the bird neck's inherent flexibility and …

Species richness is strikingly uneven across taxonomic groups at all hierarchical levels, but
the reasons for this heterogeneity are poorly understood. It is well established that …

Body size and shape play fundamental roles in organismal function and it is expected that
animals may possess body proportions that are well-suited to their ecological niche …

This paper is devoted to the control and identification of a manipulator with three anti-
parallelogram joints in series, referred to as X-joints. Each X-joint is a tensegrity one-degree …

Bird necks display unparalleled levels of morphological diversity compared to other
vertebrates, yet it is unclear what factors have structured this variation. Using three …

The Hesperornithiformes constitute the first known avian lineage to secondarily lose flight in
exchange for the evolution of a highly derived foot-propelled diving lifestyle, thus …

The head− neck system of birds is a highly complex structure that performs a variety of
demanding and competing tasks. Morphofunctional adaptations to feeding specializations …