Monthly Archives: October 2012

Like Spiderman

The image of Spider-man swinging through New York City on his webs is a familiar image to many people. He looks cool and dynamic as he flawlessly swings from building to building using his powerful webs. Luckily, for the many people who are scared of spiders, spiders can’t actually fly around like Spider-man can. Or […]

Flight of the Honeybee

Proponents of intelligent design thought they had this small, yet vastly important, query under their control, or in the bag if you will. The flight of bees, that is. In the mid-1930s, French entomologist August Magnan came to the strikingly weird, yet seemingly true observation, that bees’ flight was aerodynamically impossible. However, most humans have […]

They Said It Could Never Fly

There’s no way bumble bees can fly!  Their body is way too big, their wings too small.  And it makes sense because wing loading increases as weight increases (bumble bees are definitely heavy) and the higher the wing loading the faster you must fly.  With such small wings, there’s no way they can generate enough […]

It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane … It’s a flying draco!

Having both predators on the dangerous forest floors all the way up to the perilous canopies, Draco lizards make a tasty treat to those predators that catch it. Being towards the lower end of the food chain these little creatures have to overcome various dangers just to survive. If only they could just fly away […]

Turning on a Dime

Flies are almost impossible to catch. Anyone who has waved a fly swatter around, desperately hoping to hit one, will agree. Flies are very fast, but perhaps it isn’t the speed that tricks the desperate human, but rather the remarkable capability for a fly to turn 90° in about 50-thousandths of a second. Already, these […]