Pigeons fly like helicopters, according to articles in ScienceShots and PNAS 28 November 2011.
A team of biologists and engineers have made high speed videos of pigeons to see how birds change direction whilst in flight. They filmed the birds making right angle turns and calculated the aerodynamic forces generated. They found these birds generated significant aerodynamic force during not just in the downstroke, but unexpectedly in the upstroke of their wings as well, in a similar way to hummingbirds. They also found the birds rotated their bodies and tipped their wings into the turn.
The researchers concluded that “pigeons achieve low speed turns much like helicopters, by using whole-body rotations to alter the direction of aerodynamic force production to change their flight trajectory”.
Editorial Comment: It is more accurate to say helicopters achieve low speed turns in the same way pigeons do, since helicopters were designed long after pigeons.
In this world of design deniers we must again point out the obvious, simply because no-one believes helicopters have this turning ability because metal, perspex and other substances put themselves together in the right configuration then took off. Helicopters can only fly and do right-angle turns because they were designed and built by engineers and technicians, and a mind actually is controlling them.
The absurdity of believing pigeons and hummingbirds are the result of organic molecules assembling themselves into a bird, and fly without a built-in flying program in their brain should be just as obvious!
Evidence News 7 December 2011
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