Songbirds get more colourful the closer they live to the equator
A 19th-century hypothesis confirmed at last
WHEN THE Prussian naturalist Alexander von Humboldt arrived in South America in 1799, the colours astonished him. “Look at the blossoms, the birds,” he wrote. “Even the crayfish are blue and yellow.”
This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “Bird-swatching”
Science & technology April 9th 2022
From the April 9th 2022 edition
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