Report: Bird-flight creator confesses hoax
Published: March. 22, 2012 at 6:24 PM
THE HAGUE, Netherlands, March 22 (UPI) — The man who claimed to have created a bird-like flight machine confessed Thursday on Dutch TV it was a hoax.
Netherlands artist Floris Kaayk, who went by the name of Jarno Smeets during his “Human Birdwings” project, said the hoax was eight months in the making, Wired Science reported. Kaayk appeared on a Dutch television program called “De Wereld Draait Door” (”The World is Turning”).
Kaayk said he attempted the hoax because “it’s everybody’s dream to fly.”
“He wanted to chase a dream, as most artists do. He wanted to inspire people and I think he succeeded,” neuromechanics scientist Bert Otten of the University of Groningen told Wired Science. “As an artist he has succeeded, but he has fooled most of us. We all want to fly, don’t we?”
Kaayk asked Otten in August 2011 about the mechanics of flight. Otten said he was not in on the hoax.