Archives: Biomechanics

Tuesday, July 5, 2022

Flight school

Our research on hummingbird flight is featured in the July 2017 National Geographic! The article is all about hummingbird science, and how new techniques are allowing us to see aspects of their behaviour that aren’t available to the unaided eye. You can read the print article here, see a beautiful video summary here, and another one here.... More

Tuesday, July 5, 2022

Bird-inspired drones

This Christmas the strong winds decorated the trees with shiny new drones: (photo by Rod Croskery) Drones of the future are going to get a lot more maneuverable. A group at Imperial College London has now built an aquatic diving drone with wings that can tuck in for protection during rapid plunges, inspired by the... More

Tuesday, July 5, 2022

How hummingbirds control flight

We have a new study out on how birds use visual cues in flight. Here is a summary: Thanks to Charlie for helping to capture the video footage! The study is a collaboration with Tyee Fellows and Doug Altshuler at UBC. For the experiments, we used eight high-speed black & white cameras to capture the entire... More

Tuesday, July 5, 2022

Peacock physics

We have a new paper out! Biomechanics of the peacock’s display: how feather structure and resonance influence multimodal signaling In this study we describe the rapid feather vibrations that peacocks use during courtship. These vibrations – at a rate of about 26 Hz on average – represent a substantial mechanical and metabolic challenge for... More

Tuesday, July 5, 2022

Hummingbird agility depends on raw muscle power

Paolo Segre and I were invited to write this blog post on our latest hummingbird study! The study, published in eLife, is here. From January 15,... More

Tuesday, July 5, 2022

SICB Portland

Here is the poster we presented at SICB Portland last week on the biomechanics of peacock displays (click to enlarge): I think it turned out pretty well, although I’m not sure it could stand alone without an interpreter. We had a constant stream of awesome visitors. My coauthor Suzanne brought feathers and a model... More

Tuesday, July 5, 2022

Feel the vibration

In between field work, I’ve been making a lot of videos lately – mostly for my students in the summer course in Ecology and the Environment. But my latest creation is entirely different: it’s for the upcoming American Ornithologists’ Union (read: bird nerd) conference. It features slow-motion clips of peacocks vibrating their train... More

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