Today is John James Audubon‘s 226th birthday. His exquisite images of North American wildlife are his homage to nature, especially birds. One aspect of birds’ beauty is their adornment, displaying colors rivaled in the animal world only by butterflies. Feathers far exceed fur in specialization in length and shape for display and survival. One of my most moving bird encounters was with a Glossy Ibis in the Bronx River.
But even the least showy birds, like the herring gull, entrance us with another for of beauty — flight. Even though we’ve crossed the globe with airplanes (and are paying the global climate disruption price for it) we still stare upward with awe and envy at birds sailing atop sea breezes. As a scientist and engineer, Leonardo Da Vinci was as in love with birds as Audubon.
Today at Germany’s Festo engineering firm, much of Da Vinci’s dream of mechanical bird flight has been realized, as reported by National Public Radio. This remote-controlled herring gull replica is a major achievement in the booming field of biomimicry, cribbing design tips from nature, with wings that torque and twist in several locations in a coordinated — graceful — way. Herring gulls over the Baltic seashore didn’t look askance at the robot among them.
See for yourself here:
The next step is to meld this machine with artificial intelligence for what might be called an “Audubonaton.” William Butler Yeats might would certainly lament that an immortal bird made of carbon fiber and plastic foam lacks the romance of one fashioned from “hammered gold and gold enameling,” but such is life post-Byzantium.
Perhaps the most appropriate technological response to the crises facing natural habitats is to use lessons from evolution to build a more sustainable society. The Biomimicry Institute seeks to contribute to solutions along that avenue through its AskNature program. But each acre of forest cut down, and each aquatic species overfished or acidified out of existence, and each wetland or meadow paved over for development, is a lesson lost. Conservation is key. Please support conservation efforts as a volunteer or donor. You can start close to home with a birthday present to NYC Audubon and help save the Four Sparrows Marsh!