A robot that swims like a diving bird and then flies like, well, a bird, sounds like the setup for two different machines ...

A lightweight robot modeled on diving birds can swim underwater, break through the surface, and continue flying without using ...

Loons, gulls, puffins and petrels are some of the 100 species of birds that can both fly and swim. These diving birds can ...

Drone aircraft are no longer curiosities—they're widely used in recreation, transportation, and even warfare. Most of these flying machines use rotary-wing quadcopter designs, which allow them to take ...

Ahmed K. Othman, Girguis Sedky, Hannah Wiswell and Aimy Wissa (left to right) equipped the wings of an RC plane with covert-inspired flaps, and flew it at Princeton's Forrestal Campus to prove that ...

Even the giant wings of the albatross are not "optimally" shaped for their extraordinary long-distance migrations, according to new University of Bristol research. The study, published in Nature ...

Bird physiology is conducive to flight: small size, hollow bones, and generally symmetrical feathers on the wings and tail. It seems like a no-brainer that bird evolution was optimized for flight, but ...

Pterosaurs ruled the air long before birds did, and over more than 100 million years they grew into everything from small fliers to giants with wingspans above 10 meters. That range should have ...

“Awkward” would probably be the most benevolent word I could use to describe the explosive launch into flight of the California quail. Certainly, the words graceful or athletic do not come to mind.