Birds (advertisement) Birds (advertisement) "Birds" is an award-winning television commercial for the Washington Lottery; it won a Silver Lion at the 2009 Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, and "Best in Show" at the 2009 National ADDY Awards. "SHOOT" magazine placed it on their Top 10 list for Summer 2008. First broadcast in June 2008, it depicts three flightless birds—a penguin, a chicken, and an emu—being taken hang-gliding (the chicken and the penguin are shown wearing harnesses strapped to the chest of the glider pilots; the emu's harness is suspended between two gliders). The images of the birds in mid-air were produced by
Evolution of birds evolved into some basic lineages by the end of the Cretaceous (see "Vegavis"). The Neornithes are split into the paleognaths and neognaths. The paleognaths include the tinamous (found only in Central and South America) and the ratites, which nowadays are found almost exclusively on the Southern Hemisphere. The ratites are large flightless birds, and include ostriches, rheas, cassowaries, kiwis and emus. A few scientists propose that the ratites represent an artificial grouping of birds which have independently lost the ability to fly in a number of unrelated lineages. In any case, the available data regarding their evolution is still very