How Bats Fly

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How Bats Fly

Postby DirtDoc » May 17, 2007 10:14 am

How Bats Fly

Experiments that reveal the swirling air around a flying bat indicate that those mammals generate lift and thrust with their wings much differently than birds do. On the upstroke, a bird can separate the large feathers on its wings, permitting air to flow cleanly through and minimizing any downward, altitude-robbing force. Bats can't do that, because their wings are continuous, although flexible, membranes.

A review article is in Science News May 12, 2007, V. 171 N 19, Pg 293-294. The web reference is:

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20070512/fob6.asp

but you may not be able to access it unless you are a subscriber to Science News.

The original article is Hedenström, A., et al. 2007. Bat flight generates complex aerodynamic tracks. Science 316(May 11):894-897. Abstract available at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/a ... 6/5826/894

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Postby Ralph E. Powers » May 26, 2007 1:50 am

Somewhere there's videos of bats in flight done in slow motion photography. Haven't seen it for a while but it looked pretty cool. Should be somewhere on the net without a doubt... hmm, Google... do your thing! :grin:

So far found this... (no video -- pout) http://www.physorg.com/news88359720.html

And these... http://vis.cs.brown.edu/results/videos/ ... 4-BEB.html

http://vis.cs.brown.edu/results/videos/ ... 3-BFF.html

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanId ... atest_news

http://microfluidics.engin.brown.edu/batflight.html
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