Nanomechanical properties of bird feather rachises: exploring naturally occurring fibre reinforced laminar composites

Flight feathers have evolved under selective pressures to be sufficiently light and strong enough to cope with the stresses of flight. The feather shaft (rachis) must resist these stresses and is fundamental to this mode of locomotion. Relatively little work has been done on rachis morphology, especially from a mechanical perspective and never at the nanoscale. Nano-indentation is a cornerstone technique in materials testing. Here we use this technique to make use of differentially oriented fibres and their resulting mechanical anisotropy. The rachis is established as a multi-layered fibrous composite material with varying laminar properties in three feathers of birds with markedly different flight styles; the Mute Swan (Cygnus olor), the Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) and the partridge (Perdix perdix). These birds were chosen not just because they are from different clades and have different flight styles, but because they have feathers large enough to gain meaningful results from nano-indentation. Results from our initial datasets indicate that the proportions and orientation of the laminae are not fixed and may vary either in order to cope with the stresses of flight particular to the bird or with phylogenetic lineage.