Honey bees and hummingbirds can hover like helicopters for minutes at a time, sucking the juice from their favorite blossoms while staying aloft in a swirl of vortices. But the unsteady air flows they ...

Researchers have designed flexible, bat-like wings that boost lift and improve flight performance. This innovation could lead to more efficient drones or energy-harvesting technologies. In 1934, ...

Bats stay aloft by employing an aerodynamic trick previously thought unique to insects, researchers said on Thursday. Using a wind tunnel to study the wake bats leave as they fly, they found that a ...

Scientists undertook a study of dragonfly wings in order to better understand the relationship between a corrugated wing structure and vortex motions. They discovered that corrugated wings exhibit ...

Staying aloft when hovering and flying slowly is demanding. According to quasi--steady-state aerodynamic theory, slow-flying vertebrates should not be able to generate enough lift to remain aloft.

In 1934, French entomologist Antoine Magnan wrote that bumblebees “should not be able to fly”, as their small wings should theoretically not be able to produce enough lift. It took modern high-speed ...