Birds have an incredible amount of control over their wing shape. They can clap their wings, they can (partially) close their wings but they can also make minute alterations to the shape of their wrings. Do you know how the hair on your arm stands up when you get goosebumps? It’s kinda like that, each feather is an individual surface and together they make up a wing.
That’s why birds have an incredible amount of control over their flight. Airplanes simply have wings that create lift if they’re moving forward with sufficient thrust and some control surfaces to steer. A bird can flap, close, fold and alter the surface of each individual wing constantly mid flight.
It’s also very energy-consuming. For the most part, we just want our airplanes to move from point A to point B. Even if we had the systems and control technology to do that with birdlike wings, and we don’t, it would be very energy inefficient. We have no need to dodge tree branches or predators. We don’t need to hover our airplane over flowers while we feed.
[We do have simple bird like drones](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6VLzKACnS8) these days that by flapping their wings and they’re already much more agile than fixed-wing drones. But they don’t nearly have the wing control birds have and they consume much more energy than fixed-wing drones.
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