All cheap feathers are actually genuine and there are no fake feathers.
Feathers are used in a variety of things, from badminton shuttlecocks to cat toys. YouTube channel
There's no such thing as a fake feather - YouTube
These are inexpensive feathers sold at craft stores, but they are all real bird feathers.
Lisa, an illustrator at MinuteEarth, loves making costumes for cosplay, and when making costumes she looks for inexpensive materials to cut costs.
Cheap materials are mostly made of plastic, such as artificial hair, synthetic leather (faux leather), and artificial fur (faux fur). However, the 'cheapest feathers' are not made of plastic, but are real bird feathers.
One of the reasons why all the feathers used in crafts are from real birds is that there are a large number of 'real bird feathers that need work,' meaning there are a large number of surplus real bird feathers. Feathers are not only sourced from certain birds, but also come from chickens, turkeys, ducks, and other birds that are used for food. Feathers are used as insulation for blankets and coats, and can also be dyed to make boas and fans.
Birds naturally replace their feathers throughout their lives, so even the more expensive feathers, like those of ostrich or peacock, are relatively easy to come by.
The fact that they are 'easily available' is not the only reason why all commercially available feathers are 'real bird feathers.' Another major factor is that even if you try to make artificial feathers, it is difficult to reproduce the shape of real feathers using plastic.
Faux leather is nothing more than flat plastic glued to fabric, but it's cheap and looks a lot like real leather. Synthetic hair is similar, being plastic stretched into long, thin fibers. You can tell they're faux leather or faux hair if you look closely, but only from a distance.
On the other hand, if you try to mold feathers out of plastic, they end up looking more like leaves than feathers, and while they can be made cheaply, they don't have the same precision as real feathers.
This is because real feathers have an incredibly complex structure, with thousands of tiny hooks and barbules (tiny branching structures in the feathers) at the tips of the feathers that allow them to interlock together like a real zipper.
Furthermore, when artificial feathers are made using a mold, the inside becomes a lump of plastic, whereas the core of a real bird feather has air gaps like a sponge, making it literally 'light as a feather.'
The keratin on the surface of feathers (the main component of feathers) bends light like a prism, creating a translucent glow. Some of these tiny structures are only about 10 micrometers in size, which is too intricate to replicate in a plastic mold, MinuteEarth points out.
While some artists and engineers can create amazing artificial feathers, the best ones take longer and are more difficult to produce, so 'for now, mass-produced feathers are still largely a monopoly on birds,' MinuteEarth said.
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