Yet it wasn’t until the early 1900s that we found a way to fly. And, unsurprisingly, we did it through lessons learned from our feathered friends. We adopted the lightly curved shape of a bird’s wing – an aerofoil – and designed planes around it, because it was so efficient at managing airflow. The Wright brothers, too, owe much of their success to birdwatching. It was by observing buzzards soar above a river gorge – and how they twist their wingtips when they turn – that they solved the manoeuvrability issues that had plagued their craft.
The powerful wing muscles, porous bones and variety of wing and feather shapes that have evolved in birds have inspired many technologies. But scientists are discovering that bird flight isn’t solely about cutting through the air. It seems that a number of species use specialist features to actively manipulate the air as they fly, giving them the evolutionary upper hand… or wing.
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Esta historia es de la edición March 2022 de BBC Wildlife.
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