Different insects flap their wings in different manners. Understanding the variations between these modes of flight may help scientists design better and more efficient flying robots in the future.

Some insects can flap their wings so rapidly that it’s impossible for instructions from their brains to entirely control the behaviour. Building tiny flapping robots has helped researchers shed light ...

How did insect wings originate? This is a question that represents an unsolved mystery of insect evolution. Despite many years of research, it is still not entirely clear from which body structure ...

The study of bio-inspired flapping flight and the dynamics of micro air vehicles (MAVs) has grown into a vibrant interdisciplinary field, merging insights from insect biomechanics, aerodynamics and ...

About 350 million years ago, our planet witnessed the evolution of the first flying creatures. They are still around, and some of them continue to annoy us with their buzzing. While scientists have ...

Beetle wings are often hidden. Nestled behind armored shields on the beetle’s back, they unfurl in whirring sheets, whisking their clumsy owners from danger. Beetles don’t have more than two sets of ...

For centuries, the dazzling colours and intricate wing designs of butterflies have fascinated people. These insects have an ...

Deep under the Jurassic rock beds of New South Wales, scientists discovered fossilized insects that push back the history of one of the world’s most hardy families of flies. These fragile traces, ...

Scientists built a working model of an early winged dinosaur to test a hypothesis about how the appendages evolved. By Asher Elbein The origin of bird wings has long presented a puzzle to ...

Classification of insects and their wingbeat kinematics -- Wingbeats and vorticity -- Evolution of flight in the insect orders -- Problems of endopterygote insect ...