They can climb onto other animals to drink their blood, pluck insects from leaves or hover to drink nectar from tropical flowers, all of which require distinctive wing designs.

Bat wing-like membranes that change their shape in response to the prevailing wind conditions have been tested in-flight, taking them a step closer to use in Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs).

Tokita et al.find that bat wing muscles are derived from multiple myogenic sources with different embryonic origins, and that spatiotemporal correlations exist between outgrowth of wing membranes ...

For example, Bahlman told NBC News he wanted to compare a stretchy membrane like a live bat wing with a non-stretchy material. He suspects the stretchy skin of bat wings enhances flight performance.

Graduate student Joseph Bahlman built a 3-D printed robotic bat wing based on the lesser dog-faced fruit bat, and tested it last year. This wing included an elastic membrane stretched over plastic ...

Researchers build a “robatic” bat wing from Brown University on Vimeo. Instead, Bahlman and his team printed plastic bat bones and stretched a silicone elastomer “wing membrane” over it.

Bats have done something no other mammal ever has: the leathery-winged beasts evolved powered flight thanks to specialized membranes called patagia connecting their limbs and digits to the rest of ...

Bats are incredibly agile and maneuverable flyers, but they are also uncooperative research subjects. Since bats are unlikely to follow directions from humans, University researchers developed a ...

Researchers have designed membrane wings inspired by bats, paving the way for a new breed of unmanned micro air vehicles.