Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio, Hey brain Stuff Lauren Vogelbaum. Here bats fly head first, belly down and wings stretched out to the side, just as you might expect. So how do they land upside down, a position that requires the midair acrobatics of a circus flyer. Well, before we answer that question, we first need to look at why bats would even want to land upside down. To begin with, no other flying animal lands this way. Why not just land like birds do with their feet
firmly under their bodies. The short answer is because bats wouldn't be strong enough to take off if they were sitting up right. Their wings don't produce enough lift, and their legs are too short to run along the ground to generate enough speed to get them into the air from a head above feet position. Instead, they climb up high and literally fall into flying by landing and roosting upside down. They're ready to take flight if something threatens
their sleep. So that's the why. But how do they get into this position when they aren't flying very fast and they can't cover upside down? It's all about inertia. Inertia involves Newton's first law of motion, which says a body at rest will stay at rest unless and outside force acts on it, and a body and motion will continue in a straight line unless acted upon by an outside force. And here is where inertia comes in. Inertia is proportional to a body's mass, which is the amount
of matter that a body has. The more mass, the more inertia. But how does this relate to bats. Well, they don't have much mass, they're small. And here's the thing. Bat wings have a lot of mass relative to their body size. Their wings have evolved to be made up of solid bones and muscles and so are heavier than the wings of most are flying critters, which would suggest that it might be difficult to get off the ground,
and it is remember they fall into flight. However, that same mass, when acted on by an outside force, such as a tiny little movement of the muscles and the wings while in motion, will serve to reorient the bat and get it upside down. Researchers at the Brown University Bat Lab, or as it's officially known, the Aerial Mechanics and Evolutionary Morphology Lab A recently studied bat landings using
cameras to capture the movements of the bats. They discovered that as bats got closer to the ceiling of their enclosure, they pulled one wing in close to their bodies while still flapping the other wing at full extension. This allowed the bats to rotate to the right position to land feet first on the ceiling. Think about paddling a rowboat on just one side of the boat. It makes you turn and bats aren't the only animals that exhibit inertial
re orientation, as the researchers call it. For the article this episode is based on How Stuff Works. Spoke with study author and principal investigator Sharon Swartz. She said this kind of maneuvering is similar to the mechanism used by cats to re orient to land on their feet, but is also used in many other animals. Geckos move their big tails in this way to stabilize themselves during climbing and writing. Lemurs use this mechanism in their big jumps.
We humans employ the sort of movement when gymnasts or springboard divers execute somersaults or twists, or when a figure skater changes the speed of a spin by changing the details of the position of arms or legs. And speaking of humans, the United States Air Force helped fund this study because sports said quote. Research into the aerodynamics, neural control, biomaterials, et cetera of flying animals can give builders of small
aerial vehicles rich material for their design idea. Y Today's episode is based on the article Scientists Solve the Weird Physics of How bats land Upside Down on House to farks dot Com, written by Karen Kirkpatrick. Brainstuff is production of I Heart Radio in partnership with hous towarks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Plain. Four more podcasts my heart Radio visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows