Birds, Insects, and What They Share

Biologists are improving photographic techniques to study the intricacies of flight. Let's look at what two research labs have been observing about birds and insects. They share amazing similarities in their flight strategies, despite the vast phylogenetic distance between them. This will give us an opportunity to ask what kind of cause could account for these similarities.

"You don't just partly fly," Paul Nelson quips in Flight: the Genius of Birds. "Because flight requires not just having...