How birds direct impulse to minimize the energetic cost of foraging flight.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Chin DD
PROVIDER: S-EPMC5435416 | biostudies-literature | 2017 May
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Publications
How birds direct impulse to minimize the energetic cost of foraging flight.
Chin Diana D DD Lentink David D
Science advances 20170517 5
Birds frequently hop and fly between tree branches to forage. To determine the mechanical energy trade-offs of their bimodal locomotion, we rewarded four Pacific parrotlets with a seed for flying voluntarily between instrumented perches inside a new aerodynamic force platform. By integrating direct measurements of both leg and wing forces with kinematics in a bimodal long jump and flight model, we discovered that parrotlets direct their leg impulse to minimize the mechanical energy needed to for ...[more]
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