Bringing The World Home To You

© 2024 WUNC North Carolina Public Radio
120 Friday Center Dr
Chapel Hill, NC 27517
919.445.9150 | 800.962.9862
91.5 Chapel Hill 88.9 Manteo 90.9 Rocky Mount 91.1 Welcome 91.9 Fayetteville 90.5 Buxton 94.1 Lumberton 99.9 Southern Pines 89.9 Chadbourn
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

New 3D Imaging Shows How Hummingbirds Fly

A hummingbird in flight
Ed Yoo
/
Endeavors Magazine, UNC

New modeling from Vanderbilt and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill gives a 3-D breakdown of how a hummingbird's wings work. The method by which the birds move has eluded scientists for some time. But new video imaging shows the airflow the birds create which allows their agility.

http://youtu.be/Dg8xg4U7Xqs

In a new paper, researchers point out the bird's wings function more like those of an insect than those of other birds.

"Some of the researchers in my field call hummingbirds honorary insects, because they really are using an insect like wing motion compared to most birds,"  said Ty Hedrick, who runs the Hedrick Lab at UNC.

Using 4 cameras and a highly visible ink, researchers were able to show the birds creating airflow with both their down stroke and their upstroke. UNC's Hedrick credits the build of the birds. He juxtaposes the hummingbird wing to the standard chicken breast.

"That's actually the flight muscle of a chicken, if only a chicken could fly," said Hedrick. "And its recovery muscle is a tiny thing, about 1/10th the mass. With the hummingbird, the division is much closer to the upstroke muscle being 1/3rd, to a little bit more of the mass of the downstroke muscle."

Hedrick says the next step is to develop better 3D projections, to allow a fully rotatable view of how the air operates coming off the wings.

Stories, features and more by WUNC News Staff. Also, features and commentary not by any one reporter.
Stories From This Author