A group of scientists from the US state of New Mexico took a new approach to the study of the animal kingdom: they tried to install drones on dead and mummified birds as part of an experiment to better understand the features of their flight.
“We came up with the idea that we could use dead birds and combine them with a drone,” Dr. Mostafa Hassanalian, an assistant professor at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, told Reuters this week. reverse engineering”.
Hassanalian and his team came up with the unconventional idea after they didn’t see the results they wanted when they released artificial mechanical “birds” into a flock of live animals. Drones encased in stuffed birds are currently being tested in a special cage, but they can currently only fly for 20 minutes at a time.
The project is expected to shed new light on how the birds conserve energy by flying in certain configurations where artificial drones fly alongside live flocks. This data can be applied to simplify human flight.
“If we know how these birds distribute energy among themselves, we can apply this to the aviation industry of the future to save more energy and fuel,” Hassanalian told Reuters. It is also hoped that the test will shed light on theories about how bird colors interact with flight efficiency.
Another scientist, Brenden Herkenhoff, said: “We conducted experiments and found that for our fixed-wing aircraft, applying a certain color can change the flight efficiency. We think the same applies to birds.”
Ironically, the nature of the study seems to fit with the popular “birds are not real” conspiracy theory, which for several years claimed that birds are actually artificial drones that fly in the sky to spy on people. The movement has followers in many countries around the world and has spawned a popular clothing line.
However, Hassanalian emphasizes that his research had no nefarious intentions: “In fact, I didn’t know that ‘birds aren’t real.’ I found out as soon as my story first came out.”
Source: RT
