Turbulence remains one of the central challenges in classical physics, with rare, extreme events exerting a dominant influence on mixing, transport, and energy dissipation in both natural and engineered flows. This thesis investigates such events through four experimentally driven studies encompassing canonical shear flows, high-resolution measurements of small-scale dynamics, dissipation-range characterization, and biological applications. In the first part, we conduct controlled experiments on planar (nominallytwo-dimensional) and skewed (three-dimensional) turbulent mixing layers in the Warhaft Turbulence Wind Tunnel facility. Two parallel streams of unequal velocity are generated, and mean-flow three-dimensionality is introduced using turning vanes mounted at the trailing edge of a splitter plate. Using hot-wire anemometry, we obtain measurements of mean velocities, turbulent fluctuations, and Reynolds stresses across multiple downstream locations and over a wide range of Reynolds number. Compared to the planar configuration, the skewed flow exhibits systematically reduced primary shear and normal stresses, accompanied by modest increases in secondary shear and layer thickness. Despite these quantitative differences, the skewed flow retains canonical similarity: mean velocity profiles collapse under appropriate scaling, the shear- layer thickness grows linearly with downstream distance, and Reynolds stress distributions remain approximately Gaussian. Key normalized quantities, including Townsend’s structure parameter and shear correlation coefficients, remain invariant, indicating that imposed three-dimensionality modifies turbulence intensity without altering the underlying dynamics. In the second part, we probe small-scale intermittency in planar mixing layers using nanoscale hot-wire probes with sub-Kolmogorov spatial resolution, enabling accurate estimation of high-order longitudinal velocity structure functions at Re_λ ≈ 1400, among the highest achieved in shear flow experiments that resolved small scales. We observe saturation of the scaling exponents, ζ_n →ζ_∞ ≈2.2 for n ≳ 12, providing direct experimental evidence that extremevelocity increments are dominated by highly localized, filamentary vortex structures. The third part focuses on the shape of the energy spectrum in the intermediate dissipation range of shear turbulence. We find that the spectrum follows a stretched-exponential form, E(kη)∼exp[−β(kη)γ], with γ ≈0.48, independentof Reynolds number over 450 ≲ Re_λ ≲ 1500. This invariance supports the universality of dissipation-range dynamics and highlights the intrinsic structure of small-scale turbulence. In the fourth part, we extend these experimental insights to biological flows by analyzing high-frequency acceleration measurements of free-flying soaring golden eagles. The data reveal that intermittent turbulent gusts induce stronglynonlinear and asymmetric responses, preferentially ratcheting the eagles upward, indicating that animals can exploit extreme events in turbulent environments. Collectively, these studies establish an experimentally grounded, multiscale framework linking large-scale flow organization, small-scale intermittency and their possible harvesting, and dissipation-range universality. The results provide high-fidelity empirical evidence for the role of extreme events in turbulence and lay the foundation for future experimental, computational, and bioinspired investigations.