A pigeon-inspired robot has solved the mystery of how birds fly without the vertical tail fins that human-designed aircraft rely on. Its makers say the prototype could eventually lead to passenger aircraft with less drag, reducing fuel consumption. Tail fins, also known as vertical stabilisers, allow aircraft to turn from side to side and help avoid changing direction unintentionally. Some military planes, such as the Northrop B-2 Spirit, are designed without a tail fin because it makes them less visible to radar. Instead, they use flaps that create extra drag on just one side when needed, but this is an inefficient solution.

Quadcopters these days are so precious. They take off and hover, taking pictures or whatever, and then land, recharge--and blah. If these drones were birds, they'd be prey. But the Stereotyped Nature-Inspired Aerial Grasper, or SNAG, would be their apex predator. This new quadcopter has legs, each loaded with four 3D-printed talons that lock around whatever makes contact with them, be it a branch to rest on or perhaps, someday, other drones flying where they're not supposed to.

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 been tricky, because individual wings are made up of multiple feathers. These feathers are always interacting with each other, allowing the bird's wings to morph continuously mid-flight. To learn more, David Lentink at Stanford University in California and his colleagues first looked at the wing of a pigeon cadaver. Each wing had 40 feathers, 20 on the upper side, and 20 on the lower.

A team of Stanford University researchers designed the PigeonBot. A team of Stanford University researchers designed the PigeonBot. For decades, scientists have been trying to create machines that mimic the way birds fly. A team from Stanford University has gotten one big step closer. They created the PigeonBot -- a winged robot that they say approximates the graceful complexities of bird flight better than any other robot to date.

A barely visible fog hangs in the air in a California laboratory, illuminated by a laser. And through it flies a parrot, outfitted with a pair of tiny, red-tinted goggles to protect its eyes. As the bird flaps its way through the water particles, its wings generate disruptive waves, tracing patterns that help scientists understand how animals fly. In a new study, a team of scientists measured and analyzed the particle trails that were produced by the goggle-wearing parrot's test flights, and showed that previous computer models of wing movement aren't as accurate as they once thought. This new perspective on flight dynamics could inform future wing designs in autonomous flying robots, according to the study authors.

Obi is looking fly in his custom eyewear. The orange safety goggles, adorned with tiny reflectors, fit securely over his little feathered head. But Obi the parrotlet isn't wearing these goggles to make a fashion statement. He's part of an experiment where he flies through a sheet of lasers so that researchers can see how the air around him behaves as he moves. In a paper published in Bioinspiration and Biomimetics, researchers tried to observe the wake of a bird in flight.