Swans and geese are the envy of aeronautical engineers. Even plump geese can perform remarkable aerial acrobatics—twisting their bodies and flapping their powerful wings while keeping their heads completely still.
Now, engineers have used high-speed video footage and computer models to reveal that whooper swans stabilize their heads with a complex neck that’s tuned like a car suspension.
Their findings have influenced a new design of a camera suspension system that could allow drones to record steadier video.
All birds have built-in vision stabilization to compensate for the up and down body motion caused by flapping their wings in flight. Scientists have studied the neck morphology and head motions of walking or stationary birds, but measuring the mechanism in flight has not been successful until now.
For a new study, published in Journal of the Royal Society Interface, researchers devised a method for comparing high-speed video data of a whooper swan flying over a lake with a computer model that approximated the springy damping effects of the bird’s neck that allow it to stabilize the vertical disturbances.
They found the neck functions much like how a car’s suspension system provides a smooth ride over a bumpy road. The neck vertebrae and muscles respond with just the right stiffness and flexibility to passively keep the head steady during flapping flight, and even in mild gusts.
