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Bird wings act as a suspension system that rejects gusts
Musculoskeletal systems cope with many environmental perturbations without neurological control. These passive preflex responses aid animals to move swiftly through complex terrain. Whether preflexes play a substantial role in animal flight is uncertain. We investigated how birds cope with gusty env...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
The Royal Society
2020
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7661293/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33081609 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2020.1748 |
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author | Cheney, Jorn A. Stevenson, Jonathan P. J. Durston, Nicholas E. Song, Jialei Usherwood, James R. Bomphrey, Richard J. Windsor, Shane P. |
author_facet | Cheney, Jorn A. Stevenson, Jonathan P. J. Durston, Nicholas E. Song, Jialei Usherwood, James R. Bomphrey, Richard J. Windsor, Shane P. |
author_sort | Cheney, Jorn A. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Musculoskeletal systems cope with many environmental perturbations without neurological control. These passive preflex responses aid animals to move swiftly through complex terrain. Whether preflexes play a substantial role in animal flight is uncertain. We investigated how birds cope with gusty environments and found that their wings can act as a suspension system, reducing the effects of vertical gusts by elevating rapidly about the shoulder. This preflex mechanism rejected the gust impulse through inertial effects, diminishing the predicted impulse to the torso and head by 32% over the first 80 ms, before aerodynamic mechanisms took effect. For each wing, the centre of aerodynamic loading aligns with the centre of percussion, consistent with enhancing passive inertial gust rejection. The reduced motion of the torso in demanding conditions simplifies crucial tasks, such as landing, prey capture and visual tracking. Implementing a similar preflex mechanism in future small-scale aircraft will help to mitigate the effects of gusts and turbulence without added computational burden. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7661293 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | The Royal Society |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-76612932020-11-20 Bird wings act as a suspension system that rejects gusts Cheney, Jorn A. Stevenson, Jonathan P. J. Durston, Nicholas E. Song, Jialei Usherwood, James R. Bomphrey, Richard J. Windsor, Shane P. Proc Biol Sci Morphology and Biomechanics Musculoskeletal systems cope with many environmental perturbations without neurological control. These passive preflex responses aid animals to move swiftly through complex terrain. Whether preflexes play a substantial role in animal flight is uncertain. We investigated how birds cope with gusty environments and found that their wings can act as a suspension system, reducing the effects of vertical gusts by elevating rapidly about the shoulder. This preflex mechanism rejected the gust impulse through inertial effects, diminishing the predicted impulse to the torso and head by 32% over the first 80 ms, before aerodynamic mechanisms took effect. For each wing, the centre of aerodynamic loading aligns with the centre of percussion, consistent with enhancing passive inertial gust rejection. The reduced motion of the torso in demanding conditions simplifies crucial tasks, such as landing, prey capture and visual tracking. Implementing a similar preflex mechanism in future small-scale aircraft will help to mitigate the effects of gusts and turbulence without added computational burden. The Royal Society 2020-10-28 2020-10-21 /pmc/articles/PMC7661293/ /pubmed/33081609 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2020.1748 Text en © 2020 The Authors. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Morphology and Biomechanics Cheney, Jorn A. Stevenson, Jonathan P. J. Durston, Nicholas E. Song, Jialei Usherwood, James R. Bomphrey, Richard J. Windsor, Shane P. Bird wings act as a suspension system that rejects gusts |
title | Bird wings act as a suspension system that rejects gusts |
title_full | Bird wings act as a suspension system that rejects gusts |
title_fullStr | Bird wings act as a suspension system that rejects gusts |
title_full_unstemmed | Bird wings act as a suspension system that rejects gusts |
title_short | Bird wings act as a suspension system that rejects gusts |
title_sort | bird wings act as a suspension system that rejects gusts |
topic | Morphology and Biomechanics |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7661293/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33081609 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2020.1748 |
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