This partially feathered flying machine is a way for scientists to explore the specifics of feathers in flight. (Lentink Lab/Stanford University) Airplanes don’t have feathers, but future drones might ...

Scientists seeking to understand the mechanics of bird flight have constructed PigeonBot, a robot made from 40 pigeon feathers (and a few other components). While airplanes maneuver by altering their ...

A robot that resembles a pigeon and can make tight turns like real birds may point to the future of aerospace engineering – a continuously morphing wing. Understanding exactly how birds fly has always ...

Most airplanes in the world have vertical tails or rudders to prevent Dutch roll instabilities, a combination of yawing and sideways motions with rolling that looks a bit like the movements of a ...

Evolutionary biologist Michael Shapiro and his team from the University of Utah made international headlines in 2013 when they found that a prominent change in pigeon plumage, head crests, could be ...

Bird brains: Roboticists have been turning to birds for flight inspiration for years, but they haven’t yet successfully managed to get a drone to fly like one. David Lentink and colleagues at Stanford ...