Chronology | Current Month | Current Thread | Current Date |
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] | [Date Index] [Thread Index] | [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] | [Date Prev] [Date Next] |
Flying Along a Logarithmic Spiral/snip/
Peregrine falcons use two high performance skills - flight speed and visual
acuity - to attack their prey. In a trio of papers, Tucker and his
colleagues model the quantitative aspects of aerodynamic drag, assess the
optimal integration of speed and sight, and present field observations of
falcon flight. Drag, particularly at flight speeds in excess of 50 meters
per second, is minimized by keeping the head aligned with the body, but this
presents a problem: prey of the size of a robin can be seen from a distance
of 1 km only by using the deep fovea, which is oriented at an angle of about
40 degrees from the head axis.
J. Exp. WoL 203,3733; 3745; 3755 (2000).
from www.sciencemag.org SCIENCE VOL290 8 DECEMBER 2000
Dr. William J. Larson
Bill_Larson@csi.com
Institut Monte Rosa
Montreux, Switzerland