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| | Ancient wise men used to say that a bird flight is a great symbol of
creation. Flapping bird flight is surprisingly energy effective.
White hawk grabs and lifts the prey of up to 3 times heavier that
itself. No aircraft of modern days can achieve such efficiency.
Plovers have an average
wing span of just 21 inches, flight non-stop during their seasonal
migrations with an average speed of 60 miles per hour, when they
travel from Auletian Islands to Hawaii.
In order to evaluate this flight, we should compare it not to fligh of
a jet aircraft but to those of propeller planes, which push down air.
Propeller airplanes also fly about 2000 miles without refueling,
but the physical size of such plane exceed the size of plover over 30
times. Which means that plover is 30 times more efficient than
propeller plane.
As much as humans would like to muster and use the technical
principles of flapping bird flight, these principles are still not
fully understood by modern science, which still treats bird flight as
a miracle of nature.
Hopelessly trying not only to imitate bird flight but also to
understand how it can be possible within the laws of aerodynamics,
modern science builds its greedy and capricious airplanes which use
wings creating the lifting power,
but not the thrust. Meanwhile, flapping wings of birds
elegantly combine these two functions based on engineering concept,
striking by its simplicity.
Lets recall that almost all birds, except for perhaps the smallest
ones, possess the technique of a gliding flight. Some of them have
polished this technique down to perfection: sea birds demonstrate the
miracles of flying, when they rely
on energy of wind, at times seemingly freezing in one spot flying against
the front wind. The simple fact is that spawned and fixed bird wings
create a lifting power with sufficient streamline speed. However the
flapping movements of wings are needed not for creation of lifting
power, but for thrust. |
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A cat in China has grown two 