Planes that always seem to bump around while flying through massive turbulence can learn a thing or two from hummingbirds.
Hummingbirds always have to fly to find food, even when the weather is windy, so they have built up a remarkable ability to fly stability in these conditions.
A new study conducted at RMIT University in Australia proved their amazing resilience to turbulence.
It's difficult to actually capture a hummingbird flying during a wind storm, so the researchers manufactured one for the purposes of the study. The team recorded the hummingbirds flying towards a sugar feeder in a tunnel manually pumped with 10-mph winds.
The hummingbirds had virtually no issues flying under the wind conditions, according to Paccording to Popular Mechanics' report on the study. For comparison, pilots flew mini drones in the same tunnels under the same conditions, but the drones could barely stay in the air.
It's not entirely clear why hummingbirds are so stable in the wind, but the team is reportedly planning to research how hummingbirds "recruit" their muscles to fight high winds in the future.
