Bio-Inspired Modes of Flight

Dear Colleagues,

Flight endows organisms—both animals and plants—with unique survival advantages, enabling them to locate habitats, disperse seeds, forage for food, and evade predators at higher speeds. To adapt to diverse survival challenges, nature has evolved an astonishing variety of flight strategies. These adaptive modes, refined through evolutionary processes across different ecological scenarios, cannot be fully realized by a single discipline alone. Instead, they require the integration of multiple scientific fields, including aerodynamics, meteorology, structural engineering, materials science, control theory, and sensor technology. Decoding the flight mechanisms of living organisms offers profound insights for human development, inspiring the design of more efficient, energy-saving, and safer aerial transportation systems, advanced air cargo solutions, and aerial exploration missions for extraterrestrial planets. These discoveries also hold immense potential for broad applications across numerous domains.

This Special Issue focuses on novel findings in bio-inspired flight modes, the scientific principles underpinning biological flight, and applications of biomimetic principles across diverse fields. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Biomimetic flapping-wing flight;
• The thematic in‑flight shape variation of flapping wings;
• Long-endurance flight utilizing atmospheric energy;
• Gliding flight of volant animals (e.g., flying squirrels, flying snakes);
• Passive aerial movement of biological structures (e.g., plant seeds, spores, spider silk, falling leaves) driven by wind.

We also welcome original contributions from experimental studies, numerical simulations, mechanical design research, ethological studies, biomorphology research, artificial intelligence applications, meteorological research, as well as interdisciplinary studies that bridge these fields.

This Special Issue provides a pivotal academic platform for advancing scientific research into the diverse flight strategies evolved by organisms in response to varying ecological pressures.

Dr. Longfei Zhao
Dr. Jiang Zhao
Guest Editors

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