SOME birds fly more like fighter planes than conventional aircraft, which is why they can make impressively sharp turns when diving for prey.
The wings of a conventional plane push air downwards, and the reaction to this force is what creates lift. Until now, scientists thought that birds’ wings generated lift in the same way. Insects, by contrast, are known to use a more complicated mechanism: they rotate their wing tips as they flap. This sets up vortices on the leading edge of the wing that increases the wing’s effective thickness and hence its lift. Some fighter aircraft have wings…
