What defines the biomechanical performance of an animal? Dr Robert Ray (Francis Crick Institute), in collaboration with Dr Richard Bomphrey’s group at the Royal Veterinary College have just published their findings that by altering the production of just one protein they can change – and even improve – flight agility in fruit flies. This ground-breaking…
Tag: flight
In Focus: Innovations in bats’ skin helped flying mammals take off
This week’s post was written with the help of Dr Jorn Cheney, post-doctoral fellow at the Royal Veterinary College. If you would like to contribute a guest post, please get in touch on Twitter or Facebook. Powered flight has evolved four times in the animal kingdom: once each in insects, birds, pterosaurs and bats. Biomechanists have spent decades…
News: RVC’s Dr Richard Bomphrey talks about smoke, lasers and solving the bumblebee paradox
It’s a commonly-quoted scientific paradox that bumblebees should be unable to sustain flight, according to the laws of aerodynamics. But Richard Bomphrey, from the RVC’s Structure and Motion lab, is using biomechanics and some seriously high-tech equipment to solve this and other major questions in insect flight – read all about it in a new article…
X-ray shows the bone structure of a bat’s wings
Bats are the only group of mammals to have achieved powered flight (as opposed to gliding), and represent one of only four known instances of the evolution of true flight, along with insects, birds and pterosaurs. Here, the bone structure of the wings is highlighted in the brown long-eared bat, Plecotus auritus. The majority of support for the…
Anatomy To You 