Bats owe their upside-down landing abilities to their big, heavy wings, PBS NewsHour reports. “The more we observe flight behavior in bats, the more we are impressed”, Swartz said.
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Bats inhabit heavily wooded areas and caves, so flying with tight maneuvers is essential. She further explained that bats have to change movements from flying with the heads forward to then execute an acrobatic stunt that involves putting its head down and feet up – something that no other flying animal can do.
“Bats land in a unique way”, said Sharon Swartz, one of the researchers, in a news release.
The bats flipped upside down by pulling one of their wings closer to the body while the other remained extended. They then used motion capture to document the movements and relayed the shots via computer simulations, which enabled researchers to switch different forces on and off. When the aerodynamic forces were turned off, the simulations still showed the same movements.
Researchers at Brown University have learned why bats are able to land upside down.
A bat’s wing is a heavy, hand-like assemblage of bone, skin, muscle joints and tendons.
However, exactly how they manage to generate the forces necessary to perform those incredible maneuvers had not been clear – that is, until now. By throwing that extra wing weight around in very precise ways, bats generate inertial forces in order to reorient themselves, rather than relying on the aerodynamic forces generated by pushing against the air.
Researchers discovered the role of inertia in bat flight by studying three Seba’s short-tailed bats (Carollia perspicillata) and two lesser dog-faced fruit bats (Cynopterus brachyotis) who were trained to fly into an enclosed space and land on a piece of mesh attached to the ceiling.
In another test, the researchers removed the mesh hence, the bats had nothing to hold on to.
The researchers analyzed data from video footage and created computer simulations that brought into consideration inertia as opposed to aerodynamics.
This is the same force of inertia that figure skaters use when they pull their arms into their bodies to speed up their dizzying spins. Using this asymmetric beat, these bats also made a half turn before landing on the mesh with their feet first. “That’s a bit of a counterintuitive conclusions”. “Normally you’d think that an animal would not want to have such massive wings, but here, it turns out that the mass can be used to a few benefit”.
Not only has this study shed light on the basic biology that helps bats fly and land upside down with such ease, it might also be useful in the development of future flying machines, including drones and microvehicles, the authors believe.
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Sharon Swartz, an engineering and biology professor at the Brown University, said that all flying animals maneuver continuously as they need to negotiate a 3D environment.
