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feathers
PBS Television had a program entitled "Raptor Force" and it got into modern aeronautical engineering's quest to adapt a bird's body-morphing abilities for fighter aircraft.In the show,they attached small closed-circuit television camera broadcast equipment to falcons and owls to get airborne with them.When "looking backwards" during flight,you could see how the feathers behaved during glides and stoops.One thought that grabs you,is that a feather is part of a closed-loop feedback system for the bird.Each feather is mounted in an articulating structure surrounded by nerve endings.During flight,if the bird's angle of attack causes detached flow,the bird can alter it's shape or orientation with respect to the surrounding air mass to regain attached flow.Herein lies the greatest benefit of the feather.It "signals" efficient flight and is constantly relaying real-time data to the flight control portion of the bird's brain.---------------------------- No doubt,bio-mimicry can aid airflow to an extent,but perhaps never to the degree of a living morphable structure.
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