Although commonly referred to as flying lemurs, colugos glide rather than fly. In addition, they are in fact not lemurs at all, rendering there name completely misleading. There are two species of colugos, one is The Malayan flying lemur and the other is the Philippines flying lemur. Together these two species make up the Dermoptera order. Colugos are […]
Helicopters are a very unique human-made flying machine. Unlike airplanes, which use wings and propellers to produce lift and thrust separately, helicopters use a single rotor at the top of the aircraft that produces both thrust and lift. This makes them more analogous to birds, which use twisting of their wings to produce lift and […]
We as humans have always marveled at the sight of birds and insects soaring through the air. But eventually we achieved flight with airplanes and even hovering with helicopters. One comes to think, do birds marvel at the wonder of the hummingbirds? Hummingbirds are quite a special species of birds. Like many other birds, hummingbirds […]
We’ve all traveled in a plane, whether it was just for business or for vacation. We’ve all been thousands of feet up in the air in the comfort of an airplane admiring the beauty of the ground below us. Unfortunately, none of us will ever be able to experience what it’s like to soar as […]
We touch keratin every day of our lives. It makes up our hair, nails, and some clothing. The keratin present is mammals is called α-helix keratin, which you can think of protein folded in a helix. The same protein that makes up these materials is what the feathers of a bird, but it is folded differently. Imagine a helix stretched […]
The honeybee, one of the world’s major pollinators. Admirably, about one-third of all our produce comes from the bees’ ability to effectively pollinate plants. At times it seems so simple, the way the Honey Bee flies, from hive, to plant, and back again to the hive. However, the science behind Bee flight is actually quite […]
The evolution of bats, even with ever-emerging research and fossil records, remains a mysterious one. Most evolution scientists agree that bats must have evolved from mammals, but unfortunately they can not find strong enough evidence as to which common ancestor bats splintered off from. Scientists now theorize that bats, the only mammal known to have […]
Before the age of the internet, computer games, and gaming consoles, kids would play outdoors. When I lived in China as a child, I remember trying to catch dragonflies with my friends; it was impossibly difficult. We would run around in the fields and spend hours in vain trying to catch these elusive insects. As […]