Some cool info on dragonfly wings....check.
With this new insight into the aerodynamic efficiency of out-of-phase flapping, engineers hope to apply it in the next generation of flapping micro air vehicles.
I seriously doubt anyone's REALLY looking at a "flapping" aircraft. MUCH easier to have a rotary mechanism than a flapping mechanism.....I'd guess it's easier on the aircraft too. Just thinking of all that stress on an attachment point...
It defies reason to suggest that an energy-efficient aerial acrobat such as the dragonfly was not intentionally, and intelligently, designed.
False conclusion Dr., but good use of the word "design"...
In fact, the researchers involved in this aerodynamic efficiency study apparently recognized the difficulty their finding presents to the widely-accepted evolutionary scenario, which posits that four-winged dragonflies arose long before (i.e., are “more primitive” than) the two-winged Diptera
BWAAAAAAhahahahaha......stupid Dr. should have studied some entomology. Dipterans' ancestors USED TO HAVE 4 wings but their hind wings developed into haltares....hint.....evolution.
Surely it makes much more sense to say that four-winged dragonflies and two-winged flies were each designed to do what they do do, and what they do do, they do do well!
Surely, Dr., it makes more SCIENTIFIC sense to say that dipterans, hemipterans, anisopterans, zygopterans, tricopterans, etc.... evolved or co-evolved from common 4-winged ancestors.
The Creationist thing to say is "God did it."
If you want to see the feathers fly, just say ‘a God’, instead of ‘The God’.
I have a collection of Odonata. Some can only be speciated by the venation pattern of the wing. Beautiful creatures that spawn from some of the ugliest macroinvertebrates that ever crawled through the pond.
That could be used as a nice analogy... (fill in the blank style).
Good post!
More related information is in Steve Jones’ book “Darwins Ghost.” To wit, from pages 130 and 131 ...
“As insects battle to improve a feeble design, evolution does its best. But that best is not very impressive. The eye of the dragonfly or the water-skater has triumphed, but only because all its competitors are worse. For sight, excellence is in the eye of the beholder.
In the context of evolution, perfection is not necessary. If the eye were only a hymn to the supreme powers of a diety called natural selection it would be no more persuasive as evidence than was William Paley’s celebrated watch as proof of the existence of God. His book multiplied examples of flawless design and, with no other idea of whence it came, turned to a Great Designer. Unfortunately for him, the song of the eye has many discordant notes. They show it to be not the work of some great composer, but of an insensible drudge: an instrument, like all others, buit by a tinkerer rather than a trained engineer.”