The first wings on Earth may have evolved from the feet of an ancient, flightless crustacean. Today, modern crabs, lobsters, shrimp and crayfish are sometimes called sea bugs, and as part of the arthropod family – marked by strong body armor and split joints – the name makes no sense. …
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Nature has a way of embarrassing our best technology. For decades, scientists have been trying to create the ultimate sound absorber – a carefully engineered material that can handle sound waves for stealth movement or smooth peace and quiet. It turns out, however, that the beloved ‘metastructure’ may already exist …
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We have developed four-winged bird-shaped robots, called ornithopters, that can take off and fly with the agility of the speedy, hummingbirds, and insects. We did this by reverse engineering the aerodynamics and biomechanics of these creatures. Our ornithopters have the potential to outperform and exceed existing drone configurations with static …
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Andean condors are the heaviest flying bird in the world, with a single individual weighing up to about 16 kilos (or 35 pounds). According to new research, when it comes to keeping these heavy bodies up high, the sky is the limit, it seems. Taking off from the ground is …
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A new fossil discovery has revealed that New Zealand’s ancient monster penguins were not the only human-sized flightless birds that roamed our planet tens of millions of years ago. Recent findings in North America and Japan suggest that giant creatures like penguins also spread throughout the northern hemisphere. And these …
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