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What are four salient features of birds?

Salient means something noticeable or prominent. One of birds' main features is their feathers. All birds have feathers. Feathers are critical for warmth and flight. Another feature is wings. All birds have wings, but not all birds fly. The penguin and ostrich cannot fly, but they still have wings. Birds also have a backbone, meaning they are vertebrates. Their skeleton is also lightweight, which gives many of them the ability to fly. Their bones are hollow, allowing them to weigh less. Birds have a beak or bill. The beak is made of a body core surrounded by a thin layer of keratin. Birds do not have true teeth, so some beaks have adapted to have sharp ridges along the beak's edge. Lastly, all birds lay eggs. A bird egg has a hard shell where an embryo grows inside.

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