Flight: The Genius of Birds

Flight: The Genius of Birds is the first film in Illustra Media's new series The Design of Life. Each episode explores a different realm of the animal kingdom and the remarkable biological systems that make life on Earth possible. Photographed in North America, England, Peru, Greenland, and Antarctica, Flight probes mysteries and mechanisms of a bird's anatomy, instinct, navigation, and embryology to reveal stunning provisions essential for life in the skies. You'll marvel at a hummingbird s unique skeletal, muscular, and metabolic systems all vital to its spectacular aerial acrobatics; the endurance and navigational abilities of an Arctic tern as it travels from pole to pole during the longest migration on the planet; the instinctive strategies that enable a flock of 300,000 European starlings to evade predators at break-neck speeds; the elaborate network of a million component parts that make a single feather an aerodynamic masterpiece, and much more. The poet William Blake wrote that to see an eagle in the air is to observe a portion of genius. In Flight the ingenuity of a bird's behavior and biology showcase unmistakable evidence for design, purpose, and plan. It is evidence best explained by an intelligence that transcends the natural world. Widescreen. Approx. 63 minutes.