As children, we all visited history museums and gazed up at the ancient bones of a dinosaur rearing towards the sky, fighting off some other ferocious winged being. But was that ferocious winged being, when it was alive, just a bunch of bones too? According to new findings, the pterosaur, Quetzalcoatlus, might not have been able to initiate flight from the ground due to its inability to lift itself off of the ground with its atrophied body. The Quetzalcoatlus was just too weak to be able to lift itself off the ground on its own.
The ability to glide has evolved separately in a surprising diversity of animals that stretches from reptiles, mammals, frogs, ants, and fish to even some species of squid. One of the more interesting gliders, however, must be the Chrysopelea, often called the "flying snake".
For years scientists have known the flying fish to be the one of the earliest known examples of gliding on water by verterbrates, However, recent discoveries by scientists and researchers in China now suggest that there is an earlier flying fish, or Potanichthys xingyiensis, that is the first known of its kind. Read More »
A neon flying squid gliding above the waters of Japan.
Many are skeptical of the idea of flying, especially when they are told that animals other than birds or insects are capable of achieving flight. For this reason, the concept of flying squids sounds a little ridiculous. However, squid are accustomed to gliding in water, which means that they are able to use the same techniques to forcibly propel themselves in the air.
Cephalotes atratus, found in the forests of South and Central America
Convergent evolution is a term used to describe species that have individually evolved to acquire similar biological traits in order to serve the same purpose. Gliding is a befitting example of such evolution – mammals, reptiles, and amphibians alike have all exhibited different means of turning a fall into a smooth, controlled descent, showcasing the diversity of gliding animals and techniques. As if the current number of gliding animals wasn’t enough, recent discoveries have added yet another animal to Earth’s considerable repertoire of gliding animals – the ant.
Imagine a plane able to travel immense distances with no propulsion save the power of the wind. Such a capability, though unfathomable to most humans, has already been realized by the natural world in the unique capabilities of the Wandering Albatross. Without even flapping their wings, Wandering Albatross can travel 500-600 miles in a single day, fly the equivalent of eighteen round trips to the moon and back in a lifetime, and maintain speeds higher than 127 km/h for more than eight hours, all, achieved through the distinct skill of dynamic soaring.
The flying lemur is one of the few mammals that exhibit the evolutionary gift of aerial locomotion. However, the flying lemur does not necessarily “fly” from one place to another, rather it glides through the rain forests of tropical Asia. This ability to glide is due to a thin, blanket-like membrane that extends between its front and hind limbs. This unique feature is also prominent in the flying squirrel, with the only difference being that the tail of the lemur is attached to the thin membrane used to glide. Read More »
The Starling is a common passerine bird that can be found in temperate reigons throughout North America and Europe. It is a black songbird that has shiny green and purple feathers over its entire body. This bird has an average weight of about 78 grams and has a wingspan of about 35 cm. Also, the chord of a starling's wing is about 12 cm meaning that the wingloading of a common Starling is about 18.21 N/meters squared.
While humans have been trying to build larger and larger flying machines that can carry more and more people and cargo, even more challenging has been the task of creating very small machines that can be controlled remotely and can fly in tight spaces. In the past few years, Robert Wood and his team at Harvard have developed a robotic fly, inspired by the common house fly and looking very much like its natural counterpart.
