Hawkmoths and other insects are slow fliers compared to birds, even ones that can hover. To understand why these insects top out at 5 m/s, researchers simulated their flight from Keep reading
Tag: flapping flight
Moths and Beetles in Flight
Watching insects take flight in high-speed video is always mesmerizing. So often their wings look too small and fragile to lift their bulbous bodies, but they manage the feat easily. Keep reading
Swimming Together
Scientists have long pondered the possibilities of hydrodynamic benefits to the ways fish school. But most analyses of schooling have assumed a fixed spacing that’s far more orderly than what Keep reading
Meet BILLY
Many wings in nature are not rigid. Instead they flex and curve with the flow. Here researchers imitate that phenomenon with BILLY (Bio-Inspired Lightweight and Limber wing prototYpe). Using an evolutionary-style algorithm, Keep reading
Flying With Geese
Some people fly with geese to train them for wind tunnel tests, and some people fly with them to teach them safer migratory paths. Today’s video focuses on the latter, Keep reading
Perching Aerodynamics
When birds come in for a landing, they pitch back and heave their wings as they come to a stop in a perching maneuver. Some birds, researchers noticed, partially fold Keep reading
Featherwings in Flight
The featherwing beetle is tiny, less than half a millimeter in length. At that scale, flying is a challenge, with air’s viscosity dominating the forces the insect must overcome. The Keep reading
Turbulence in Flight
Eagles and other birds spend much of their lives in the turbulence of our atmospheric boundary layer. Some of their interactions with turbulence — like using topographical effects to aid Keep reading
Portraits of Flight
During lockdown, photographer Doris Mitsch turned her eyes to the sky and began capturing these mesmerizing composite images of animals in flight. Vultures, crows, starlings, gulls, and bats all feature Keep reading
Butterflies Emerging
When a butterfly emerges from its chrysalis, it flaps its wings to help pump fluids through its body, essentially inflating its new adult form. You get a glimpse of that Keep reading