Majority of world birds use flight as their main means of locomotion. Flight is the only way that birds use to many the dynamics of its environment. Flight is in the help of birds in breeding, avoiding predators and feeding. The mechanics behind flights in birds is a complex mechanism, which involves various adaptations that and the utilization of wings by birds. The whole process of birds’ locomotion, hovering and landing is a unique mechanism that birds are adapted to facilitate their living. The basic mechanics of birds include lift, Drag, Gliding, Flapping and wing.
Lift
The flowing of air in the wing of a bird produces the lifting force that acts as an airfoil. The lifting follows one of the principles of fluids called Bernoulli effects, which describes the reason behind the resultant effect of air pressure being greater at upper side of the wing of a bird, and lower pressure at one side usually the side below hence lifting.
Gliding
Upon gliding, birds obtain both forward and vertical force from their wings. The possibility of this is based on the generation of lift at right angles to the air movement. When the bird is descending and still gliding lift originates from the horizontal.
Drag
Three major drag forces in addition to its own weight impede the aerial flight of a bird. The friction of the body surface of a bird and the air causes frictional drag, the frontal area of the moving bird causes form drag also recognized as pressure drag and the drag caused by wing tip vortices, this called lift-induced drag. The wings and body streaming of birds serves to reduce these forces (Echeverry-Galvis, 2013).
Flapping
Unlike gliding, flapping generates lift as before. However, the lift generated is rotated forward for provision of thrust, which is a counteracting force for drag and thus serving to increase the speed of birds. This also has the effect of counteracting weight by increasing lift and the bird maintains height or can climb higher. The flapping involves a two-stage application. One is the down stroke and the upstroke. The down stroke usually provides a lot of thrust whereas upstroke also can provide thrust but depending on the bird wing. The change of attack as applied by birds is dependent on the changing of angle of down stroke and upstroke (Hedenström, 2009).
Adaptation of birds to flight
The hollow bones of birds, or the strutted bones, or also referred to as spongy bones. Most of these bones are pneumatic hence contain air sac which enable most of the birds to have little weight for easy flight and enable them float in the air. Most of the bones in birds among them including the vertebrae are fused and this provides a rigid skeleton that is very important adaptation for flights of the birds (D’Agostino, 2013).
As another way to reduce weight, most of the birds have reduction in some bones. Unlike animals other in birds, other bones are difficult to find in birds. Birds lack some bones including; teeth, and most of bird species especially the ones that fly do not have the tail bone.
Presences of feathers in all birds’ species also help reduce the weight and enable birds to fly. Feathers in birds have more than the function of making the bird light .they also well adapted for insulation of the birds’ body, that is they protect the birds against heat loss and for most of aerodynamics in birds. This includes the activity that enables the birds to fly in the air.
Birds specially use their wings exquisitely to propel their body against the pulling back force known as gravity. As birds move up, they face many different forces that include resistance from strongly moving winds as they go into higher attitudes, intensely light breezes that alter the density of the air requiring more force to overcome it (D’Agostino, 2013).
The wings of birds modified at the front in a sharp edged manner to ensure they cut through the dense air with lots of and less energy usage. The feathers have tips at the end and relatively light to give the birds ease of flipping for long distances. This helps the birds fly without quick exhaustion. The wings are very flexible in terms of opening and closing and are longer than the central body. This characteristic helps the bird to easily balance on air, turn on very sharp angles and stop abruptly in case of emergency (Echeverry-Galvis, 2013). The same fact applies on airplanes too. Their streamlined body shapes allow air to pass above in high speeds, which reduces the force of gravity exerted on their bodies. This forms a lift making the force needed to overcome the resistance minimal.
As Bernoulli’s theorem states, a reduction in the cross-sectional area of a tube directly causes an increase in the fluids velocity and a decrease in the pressure they exact. The birds’ legs are modified in a manner that after take-off, they can easily fold inwards to reduce the amount of resistance by blocking the wind.
Other adaptation for flight includes the urogenital adaptations. Some of these adaptations include all the bird species do not have urinary and this makes them to excrete uric acid that enables the birds’ species to conserve water. All the species of birds lay egg. Most of the adult females persists only the left ovary and these help in weight reduction. The sexual Organ in both the sex of birds are enlarged and are only functional during the mating period after which there is always gonads regress (Schubert, 2013). Most of the birds’ species have endothermic that is they always have very high body temperature that is between 40 to 43 degrees centigrade. Most of the body biochemical process are always very high at high temperature and hence there is rapid and to great extent sustainable production of power for flight.
In birds there digestion is fast and provide and very efficient and from this their body system acquire the power they require to fuel their metabolism. The birds have a very large and well-developed breast muscle. Their power down stroke of their wings is more or about to 40% of their total weight of their body. They also have the keeled sternum that enables them to attach their high volume flight muscles. Their heart is chambered enable well circulatory system that nourishes the muscles with blood (Echeverry-Galvis, 2013). They also have a well-developed circulatory system that enables the birds to supplied oxygen to muscles.
Next research question
The next question of research about this bird biological application is the relationship between the bird’s biology to bring about movement and that of airplanes. The other part of this is the application of birds’ adaptation to effective manufacturing of airplanes.
References
D’Agostino, F., Dawson, H., & Tobalske, B. W. (2013). Motion Studies: The Art and Science of Bird Flight. In Electronic Visualisation in Arts and Culture (pp. 121-136). Springer London.
Echeverry-Galvis, M. A., & Hau, M. (2013). Flight Performance and Feather Quality: Paying the Price of Overlapping Moult and Breeding in a Tropical Highland Bird. PloS one, 8(5), e61106.
Hedenström, A. (2009). Mechanics of bird flight: the power curve of a pigeon by CJ Pennycuick. Journal of Experimental Biology, 212(10), 1421-1422.
Schubert, C. (2013). WORLD OF REPRODUCTIVE BIOLOGY: Birds Lost Reproductive Baggage Before Taking Flight, Fossils Suggest. Biology of Reproduction.
