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Samuel Fabian/Lin Lab When falling through the air in an upside-down position, dragonflies do backwards somersaults to return to an upright stance. They do this even when they are unconscious and – if their wings are propped open – when they are dead. These findings suggest that dragonflies are equipped with a potent physical design that keeps them right side up and airborne without any real effort. Such a passive flight-stabilisation mechanism could inspire better designs for small aircraft like drones, allowing for good stability and manoeuvrability “with less computational effort”,...

To limit the spread of feral horses, researchers have invented a birth control delivery device that assembles with magnets inside the uterus and could help sterilise mares for years

Dietmar Nill / naturepl.com Bats can get lift from their landscape. The flying mammals surf on air currents, which sweep upwards as they hit hills or slopes, to reach altitudes of up to 1600 metres. Birds do this too, but it wasn’t clear whether nocturnal bats could take advantage of the technique given that winds are a lot less active in the night sky. Riding thermals is relatively easy for a bird flying during the day, says Teague O’Mara at Southeastern Louisiana University. Advertisement “Because the sun heats up the landscape, there’s rising warm air. Winds come in and lift and pu...

Shutterstock / JoelSantos House sparrows are healthier when they live in groups in which different individuals have different personality types, rather than if all individuals share the same personality type. The “surprising” findings suggest that personality diversity promotes not only a healthier society, but also better physical and mental health for each individual within that society, says Zoltan Barta at the University of Debrecen in Hungary. While his team’s study focused on birds, its results may be applicable to other social species as well. “You can’t ignore the analogy wi...

Galipon Tooth-like scales on shark skin reduce drag as they manoeuvre through the ocean, and they are at their most effective when the sharks accelerate. Josephine Galipon at Keio University in Japan and her colleagues created synthetic shark skin from 3-D printed moulds based on scanning electron microscope images of skin samples from Pacific spiny dogfish ( Squalus suckleyi). They then covered an aeroplane wing-shaped model with the skin and studied the fluid dynamics – specifically, the vortices, or water swirls, left in the model’s wake – as they moved it through water. In …