Our Avian Masters

Birds are best known for their ability to fly. It has always been the dream of humanity to be able to soar like eagles. It had repeatedly been attempted my countless inventors & the adventurous. That is not the only thing we have learned from our winged friends.

Before we discovered the secret to human flight, we did utilize the properties. Kites were used to fish by dangling bait from the tail. They were once used to lift observers, in war, to get a vantage point over their opponents. The story of Ben Franklin & electricity is famous. There is a famous photograph of Marconi on Signal Hill, just outside St. John's, Newfoundland & Labrador in which he is raising a kite antenna to receive the first radio signals from across the Atlantic Ocean, in December 1901. This was all fine and dandy, but we were tethered. We did gain a bit more of a vantage point & we found a way to fish from the air, like the birds do. We managed this after learning how to make pieces of material soar & glide like birds.

Long before the power of human flight came into being, the feathers of birds were commonly used for other purposes. Basically, feathers consist of a tube with smaller tubes running the length of it at regular intervals, with smaller tubes running the lengths of these & so on. This makes feathers very lightweight & strong. They can be very soft as in the down we use for pillows. They are used as insulation as in our clothes. We were once using feathers as pens. We knew about their aerodynamic value in arrows. Feathers can be used to absorb or repel moisture. Furthermore, as in the male birds, they have been widely used as an extravagance.

A lot of birds also utilize air bags throughout their bodies which makes them a lot lighter than they look & creates buoyancy. This is great for impacts, which they would presumably get as most travel off of the ground, usually at speeds greater than the other animals. We use air bags to reinforce the interiors of certain structures as well as to cushion the impact of accidents in automobiles.

Those very cleverly adapted beaks were once used as punches for tailoring clothes. In some birds like gulls, salty water is expelled through the beak. The beak makes an important part of their respiratory or ventilation system. We utilize the same characteristics in moving vehicles to push cool air through the heated bodies of vehicles.

What makes a bird so light in weight, as in eagles and gulls? Their skeletons consist of a honeycomb-like structure. The bones are filled with holes. This allows air to fill the space of bone. It also gives the bones a more rigid construction. How does an hummingbird or a songbird manage to not break its bones, tiny bones, whenever they land or squeeze into their nests. They are very strong. It also protects those deep diving penguins. It explains the forces they exert on their bodies during flight. Peregrine falcons can dive at an higher velocity than any other animal can move, including humans. Gannets can dive from great heights head first into the ocean. They don't break any bones. This honeycomb structure has been copied throughout history by people.

Then we have the power of flight. We did manage to glide & soar with a little assistance. We first had to figure out the aerodynamic properties of feathers & their setups on different birds. The gliders we fly, have long rigid wings like gulls & other seabirds. Human powered flight had been tried, and still is, using our own muscles to propelled the wings. We need a way to dramatically enhance what meager power we possess. Even the most powerful person on the planet would not be able to sustain flight. The largest part of a birds anatomy is the chest muscles or the breast, along with a very strong sternum. But it is the wings that we learned from in order to create a machine that could fly. We figured out the shape, strength, & size of the wings of a vehicles to get it off the ground & stay there. We used these same properties to further customize the ability & to make it more comfortable & efficient through the advent of wind tunnels. Now, some planes have a short, wide wings for maneuverability like some of the predators of dense forests. They have long slender wings for long travel. Some are made to be quieter, as in some owls.

Some of these advances by humanity may or may not have been directly attributed to birds. Some may have been enhanced from later knowledge of birds. What else can we learn from these unique animals. Can we figure out why vultures can tolerate such extremes conditions as rotting, disease ridden flesh. The optics associated with some birds may greatly enlighten our view of our planet. Can we discover anything from their method of giving birth? Some early peoples, no doubt, starting building nests as birds did leading to dwelling in trees. Can we figure out what makes birds so highly adaptive? Several bird species have been trained to mimic noises. They actually do this in the wild with birds of different areas using different animal calls. There is much research on birds ability to navigate great distances. What more can we learn from the masters of the air?