Sunday 10 June 2012

Birds Best Bats In Flying Game


Birds are more aerodynamically efficient when flapping through the air than similar-sized bats, new research suggests. This could be why birds migrate farther than bats.

So what's slowing down the night flyers? Researchers suggest the big ears and special nose shapes of leaf-nosed bats create drag, while the bats membranous wingsmay also work against them, when they raise their wings.

"If the bird and bat need to fly a certain distance with a certain amount of fuel, the birds can fly faster. If they are flying the same speed the bird can fly farther," study researcher Florian Muijres, of the University of Washington, told LiveScience. "The results sit very well with ecological differences between birds and bats; birds tend to fly farther when they migrate and they fly faster."

Muijres did the research as a part of his graduate work at Lund University, in Sweden. He wanted to see if both fliers were at the top of their game, of if the bats, since they evolved later, were still playing catch up. Both birds and bats are evolutionarily adapted to their efficient flying styles, he found, but because of their solid wings bats will never fly as fast or as far as birds. This could be why birds migrate and bats hibernate.

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