Under these drastically changing conditions, the struggle to survive favored the larger birds with deep, strong beaks for opening the hard seeds. Smaller finches with less-powerful beaks perished.

But have you ever wondered why so many birds have red beaks? In some cases, a red beak helps them attract mates. For others, it helps with camouflage in their natural habitat. In most cases ...

In the avian world, birds showcase an incredible diversity of beaks—some enormous, others unusually long, and some even lethal. All hornbill species have a unique structure called a casque on ...

For example, the cactus finch has a long beak that reaches into blossoms, the ground finch has a short beak adapted for eating seeds buried under the soil, and the tree finch has a parrot-shaped ...

The paper, by S. Lamichhaneyat Uppsala University in Uppsala, Sweden, and colleagues was titled, "A beak size locus in Darwin's finches facilitated character displacement during a drought." ...

The different finch species on the islands are closely related to each other, but show wide variations in beak and body size and feeding behaviour. In particular, changes to the size and shape of the ...