FLIGHT FEATHERS & VELCRO

Rainbow lorikeet

Have you ever had to pick Bathurst burrs out of your socks?  

In 1941, Swiss electrical engineer George De Mestrel was picking burrs out of his socks and his dog's coat after a ramble in the woods when George cleverly realized the potential for hook fasteners and invented Velcro, borrowing the idea from the design of burrs. 

Did he realize that birds would be unable to fly if there were no hook fasteners in their flight feathers? 
So who designed these? 

We have all seen the main shaft (rachis) of a bird's flight feather and the barbs that branch off this.  What is harder to see are the barbules branching off the barbs and without a microscope you will never see the barbicel hooks that lock the barbules together. Try unzipping the barbs of a feather then re-zipping the gap by stroking it between your fingers.

But that’s not all!  A flight feather is designed with stiffness for the downward wing stroke, and somehow knows how long to grow and what colour pattern to display, depending on its location on the wing or tail.  Birds have hollow bones and can manipulate their flight feathers, even in flight – but that’s a story for later.

Acknowledgements:
Dr. Gary Parker, biologist
www.whitcombministries.org
wikipedia.org
Photo credit: australiananimallearningzone.com
Image credit: daviddarling.info