Would you like to be able to move your ears at will? There’s a good chance you already can (using a 25 million-year-old neural circuit). Dr Samuel Alexander Kinnier Wilson [pictured] was the first to formally document the so-called oculoauricular phenomenon in his 1908 paper ‘A note on an associated movement of the eyes and […]
Tag: flap
Hummingbirds get hot too
No machine can be 100% efficient – and Hummingbirds (Selasphorus calliope) are no exception. As a result, when they flap their wings (typically at around 50Hz) they generate considerable quantities of heat. To find out how much, investigators at the Department of Biology, George Fox University, OR, and the Division of Biological Sciences, University of […]
The role of flapping elephant ears in heat dissipation
Elephants are big, and they get hot. Especially in Africa. Thus, from the elephant’s point of view, there’s sometimes an urgent necessity to dissipate excess heat. Some investigators have suggested that flapping their large ears (strictly, their ‘pinnae’) could provide a significant heat-loss mechanism. (e.g. Buss, I. O., and Estes, J. A., 1971, ‘The Functional […]
New Insight into Flag-Flapping
A new French study demystifies some of what some laypersons call “flag flapping” and others call “the flapping of flags.” The researchers cite, among other influences, previous research done by Ig Nobel Prize winner L. Mahadevan (who was honored for exploring the physics of how sheets get wrinkled). Details are in: “Oblique Waves Lift the […]