"On the Wing is the first book to take a comprehensive look at the evolution of flight in all four groups of powered flyers: insects, pterosaurs, birds, and bats."--Book jacket.

Wings carry tiny insects, fluttering butterflies, and backyard birds, and they even once propelled some dinosaurs up and through the skies. Find out how, when, and why birds and beasts have taken to the air, and discover how wings work in this informative and brilliantly illustrated book about flight.

How do animals get around? This fun volume explores animal mobility and the interesting adaptations that allow animals to walk, fly, and swim in many different kinds of environments. This book considers how animals use movement to seek shelter, escape predators, and explore the world around them. Young readers will learn about these crucial components of animal bodies with simple language tailored to help them read on their own while discovering the various ways animals survive and thrive.

Animals have evolved remarkable biomechanical and physiological systems that enable their rich repertoire of motion. Animal Locomotion offers a fundamental understanding of animal movement through a broad comparative and integrative approach, including basic mathematics and physics, examination of new and enduring literature, consideration of classic and cutting-edge methods, and a strong emphasis on the core concepts that consistently ground the dizzying array of animal movements. Across scales and environments, this book integrates the biomechanics of animal movement with the physiology of animal energetics and the neural control of locomotion. This second edition has been thoroughly revised, incorporating new content on non-vertebrate animal locomotor systems, studies of animal locomotion that have inspired robotic designs, and a new chapter on the use of evolutionary approaches to locomotor mechanisms and performance.

What do a bumble bee and a 747 jet have in common? It's not a trick question. The fact is they have quite a lot in common. They both have wings. They both fly. And they're both ideally suited to it. They just do it differently. Why Don't Jumbo Jets Flap Their Wings? offers a fascinating explanation of how nature and human engineers each arrived at powered flight. What emerges is a highly readable account of two very different approaches to solving the same fundamental problems of moving through the air, including lift, thrust, turning, and landing. The book traces the slow and deliberate evolutionary process of animal flight--in birds, bats, and insects--over millions of years and compares it to the directed efforts of human beings to create the aircraft over the course of a single century. Among the many questions the book answers: Why are wings necessary for flight? How do different wings fly differently? When did flight evolve in animals? What vision, knowledge, and technology was needed before humans could learn to fly? Why are animals and aircrafts perfectly suited to the kind of flying they do? David E. Alexander first describes the basic properties of wings before launching into the diverse challenges of flight and the concepts of flight aerodynamics and control to present an integrated view that shows both why birds have historically had little influence on aeronautical engineering and exciting new areas of technology where engineers are successfully borrowing ideas from animals.

This book provides a clear foundation, based on physical biology and biomechanics, for understanding the underlying mechanisms by which animals have evolved to move in their physical environment. It integrates the biomechanics of animal movement with the physiology of animal energetics and the neural control of locomotion. The author also communicates a sense of the awe and fascination that comes from watching the grace, speed, and power of animals in motion. Movement is a fundamental distinguishing feature of animal life, and a variety of extremely effective mechanical and physiological designs have evolved. Common themes are observed for the ways in which animals successfully contend with the properties of a given physical environment across diversity of life forms and varying locomotor modes. Understanding the common principles of design that span a diverse array of animals requires a broad comparative and integrative approach to their study. This theme persists throughout the book, as various modes and mechanisms of animal locomotion are covered. Since an animal's size is equally critical to its functional design, the effects of scale on locomotor energetics and mechanics are also discussed. Biewener begins by examining the underlying machinery for movement: skeletal muscles used for force generation, skeletons used for force transmission, and spring-like elements used for energy savings. He then describes the basic mechanisms that animals have evolved to move over land, in and on the surface of the water, and in the air. Common fluid dynamic principles are discussed as background to both swimming and flight. In addition to discussing the locomotor mechanisms of complex animals, the locomotor movement of single cells is also covered. Common biochemical features of cellular metabolism are then reviewed before discussing the energetic aspects of various locomotor modes. Strategies for conserving energy and moving economically are again highlighted in this section of the book. Emphasis is placed on comparisons of energetic features across locomotor modes. The book concludes with a discussion of the neural control of animal locomotion. The basic neurosensory and motor elements common to vertebrates and arthropods are discussed, and features of sensori-motor organization and function are highlighted. These are then examined in the context of specific examples of how animals control the rhythmic patterns of limb and body movement that underlie locomotor function and stability.

Discusses the many animals and insects that have wings, the various types of wings, and how they are used.