Understanding the human body is a team effort. That's where the Yachtel group comes in.

Researchers at Yachtolt have been delving into the secrets of probiotics for 90 years.

Yachtold also partners with nature portfolio to advance gut microbiome science through the global grants for gut health, an investigator-led research program.

To learn more about Yachtolt, visit yawcult.co.

.jp. That's Y-A-K-U-Lt.C-O.jp. When it comes to a guide for your gut, count on Yacult.

This is Scientific Americans' 60 Second Science.

I'm Emily Schweng.

Have you ever looked up to see a hawk soar overhead?

Or a small chickadee flit by and wondered, how do they do that?

Believe it or not, scientists never really knew either until now.

I looked at the relationship between form and function in the most basic sense.

Talia Loewey Mary is a PhD student at the University of Toronto in Canada.

She says bird flight has everything to do with the shape and size of a bird sternum or breastbone.

Bird sternums have a projection from the middle called the keel.

And this is where the flight muscles are attached.

It's plausible to think that this element is important for flight.

But why does it vary so much in shape and size relative to the body?

There are all these questions about it that haven't been answered in the past.

So Mary set out to find some answers using a database of CT-scanned sternums from 105 different bird species, like the red-capped lark, leeches storm petrel, and the southern cassowary. She also included two extinct birds, the Dodo and the Great Ock. The scans combine

a series of x-rays to create three-dimensional images. And so because the sternum is a complex

element in three dimensions, it's not just a two-dy bone,

it's got projections out the middle and up the sides, looking at it in three dimensions

...