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Wind Tunnel for Birds

Posted by Hemos on from the flying-through-the-tunnel dept.

bgood writes "'What, a swallow, carrying a coconut? ...' The Department of Animal Ecology at the University of Lund in Sweden uses a modern low-speed wind tunnel specially crafted for bird experiments. The birds are trained to fly in the 'test-section' and the tunnel can be tilted up or down to simulate ascent and descent. This link contains plenty of detail, complete with bird pictures. For those of you who yearn to build your own (non-bird-compliant) wind tunnel, you can find instructions in this Scientific American article."

8 of 126 comments (clear)

  1. Stuff that matters? by corebreech · · Score: 1, Funny

    When other guys are domesticated and get assigned to put the birdhouse in the backyard it's a 20-minute trip to Home Depot and 5 minutes hammering the thing to a tree.

    --
    Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
  2. Compliance by Engelbot · · Score: 3, Funny

    Well, *my* wind tunnel is 100% OpenSwallow 2001 compliant, and supports remote control through /dev/windtunnel. :-)

  3. What, no benchmarks? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    And all this time, I was hoping to see the effect it has on rfc1149 throughput.

  4. Re:007 Bird Agent by dimator · · Score: 3, Funny

    Such a device would be terrible for living birds. Can you imagine an enemy camp shooting every flying bird that comes close with a bazooka for fear of one of these devices?

    If you can make a bird "spy" thingy, then you could make it into other animals too, and soon the baddies would literally be shooting anything that moves.

    --
    python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
  5. An 'excercise bike' for homing pigeons by DABANSHEE · · Score: 2, Funny

    I wonder if people racing pigeons will buy these for pigeon training.

  6. One experiment goes horribly wrong... by Crag · · Score: 3, Funny

    Scientist #1: OH MY GOD! The tunnel is coming apart!

    Scientist #2: DUCK!

  7. The greates contribution to mankind will be.. by marcelk · · Score: 2, Funny

    Given that this machine recycles its
    airflow, it provides a good training
    for these birds not to shit during flight.

  8. OH great! by G00F · · Score: 2, Funny

    Something else my bird will want for christmass! Everyear fancier toys, and new ways to advertise it. . . .

    --
    The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive