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Biomechanics is the scientific study of the mechanics of living structures, or of non-living structures such as silk or nacre that are produced by organisms.
Certain air sacs have evolved in multiple lineages of soaring birds, and it emerges that these probably function to reduce the force required from the major flight muscles as they hold the wings in place during gliding and soaring.
An investigation of the subpectoral diverticulum—an inflatable air sac structure between the major flight muscles—in 68 avian species reveals that the respiratory system has a role in the mechanics of flight in soaring birds.
Thermal soaring, inspired by gliding birds, is an appealing model behavior for understanding motion control and how it is learned by animals and engineered autonomous systems. The authors propose a deep reinforcement learning framework to study the learning process of thermal soaring under horizontal wind conditions.
Birds vary in body mass by many orders of magnitude, but how this effects the evolution of their skeletal proportions is unclear. This study shows that small body size is associated with decreased evolutionary integration between wing bone sizes, facilitating increased evolutionary lability.
Certain air sacs have evolved in multiple lineages of soaring birds, and it emerges that these probably function to reduce the force required from the major flight muscles as they hold the wings in place during gliding and soaring.
The hinge enables insects to control their wing movements, but how it works is hard to study. Multidisciplinary research, using imaging and machine-learning methods, now sheds light on the mechanism that underlies its operation.
For a century, scientists pondered whether bird flight evolved by animals gliding down from trees or by creatures running and flapping from the ground up. A landmark 1974 paper reset the debate to focus on the evolution of the flight stroke instead.