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Study reveals secret of eagles’ landing

 
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karatecatman
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 18, 2007 12:49 pm    Post subject: Study reveals secret of eagles’ landing Reply with quote

The eagles’ landing is very different from that of any other bird, something that makes them more graceful and majestic compared to others while in flight or while landing, says BBC TV.
Now, ornithologists have discovered that steppe eagles deploy a flap on the front edge of the wing as they come in to land, a mechanism used by the pterosaurs, as well as modern day jumbo jets.
Using a high-speed video camera, Anna Carruthers and her colleagues from the University of Oxford filmed a male steppe eagle (Aquila nipalensis) as it touched down on its handler’s arm.
The 500-frames-per-second camera caught the wing-flap movement as a feathery ‘‘travelling wave’’ that spread from the wrist of the wing to the shoulder. Previous footage had been too slow to catch this movement.
Carruthers said the wave appeared to be initiated automatically when aerodynamic conditions changed as the bird slowed down to land, probably to act as a stabiliser or to maintain lift at low speed.
‘‘The potential of the high-speed camera approach is enormous. It’s given us an unprecedented insight into the workings of an eagle wing. Other large birds are also thought to use front-edge wing flaps,’’ New Scientist quoted Matthew Wilkinson, an animal flight researcher at the University of Cambridge as saying.
Carruthers has opined that the finding could help develop bird- sized surveillance aircraft known as micro air vehicles.
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