How do owls achieve noiseless flight?
In: 60
Owls have disproportionatley large wings for their body size – less flappy flappy more glidey glidey. And their feathers have specially evolved serrations on their edges (google owl feather closeup) that further disturb and smooth the airflow over them reducing turbulence. While I work in aerospace Im not an aerospace engineer, so a proper explanation probably has stuff to do with fluid dynamics and cool terms like boundary separation and vortex shedding, but if I recall its vortexes caused by the wing/feather moving through the air that causes the sound. So if you have physical vanes or serrations that intrude on that and break the big vortexes into smaller ones, it’ll be quieter. Similar to how newer airliner jet engines have those little triangle teeth on the exhaust nacelles, to break up the exhaust airstream for noise abatement.
[And remember, if silence were loudness, owls would be the loudest flying bird. That is how the owl… doooo.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeFxdkaFzRA)
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