So for this Saturday's Weird Animal Question of the Week, I'm taking the author's prerogative to ask: "How do injured birds get new feathers?"

The answer is a process called "imping"—short for implantation—in which wildlife rehabilitators implant broken feathers with new ones, enabling their patients to return to the wild. The replacement feathers eventually molt like a normal feather. (See National Geographic's pictures of beautiful feathers.)

Imping is a falconry practice that goes back about a thousand years, says Meghan Warren, rehabilitation coordinator at the nonprofit Teton Raptor Center in Wilson, Wyoming.