For the pioneers of human aviation, one of the trickiest problems was figuring out how to steer the early craft. Then, the Wright Brothers changed everything by using bike parts and watching birds.

Today, penguins are found mainly in the Southern Hemisphere. But fossils have revealed giant lookalikes to these swimming birds further up north, spurring questions of how they evolved and what happened to them.

Airplanes are one of the quickest ways to get anywhere, but commercial jets haven't gotten much fast since the 1950's. Why is that?

Leonardo da Vinci was one of the most diversely talented individuals of all time. His "unquenchable curiosity" led him to make discoveries and inventions that were beyond his time, not to mention his numerous artistic masterpieces. Today...

For creatures that look nothing like us, fruit flies have been able to teach us a lot about human biology as we’ve studied them over the past century.

Who doesn’t love to gaze at a beautiful butterfly fluttering by? Aesthetically speaking, they are simply wonderful to watch. Wonderful, that is, unless you are getting a rare glimpse of pheromone laced coremata.

Paul MacCready -- aircraft designer, environmentalist, and lifelong lover of flight -- talks about his long career.

Strapped to a jet-powered wing, Yves Rossy is the Jetman -- flying free, his body as the rudder, above the Swiss Alps and the Grand Canyon. After a powerful short film shows how it works, Rossy takes the TEDGlobal stage to share the...

Plenty of robots can fly -- but none can fly like a real bird. That is, until Markus Fischer and his team at Festo built SmartBird, a large, lightweight robot, modeled on a seagull, that flies by flapping its wings. A soaring demo fresh...

If you want to get into space, you need combustible fuel. But if you want to stay operational in space, you need to harness the power of the sun itself.

Some birds fly in V shapes because it has many benefits, but other birds fly in clumps instead. Why would they do that?

Feathers are good for flying, but they help birds do a lot more than just soar through the skies.

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In tropical seas, flying fish leap out of the water, gliding for up to 200 meters, before dipping back into the sea. In the Indo-Pacific, a hunting sailfish swims up to 110 kilometers per hour. These feats are made possible by a fish's...

Bumblebees fly, lights turn on, and you can ride a bike without falling over. We all know these things to be true, but what you may not know is the real reason behind why they work. Join Olivia to bust seven myths about motion.

Here at SciShow Kids we're gearing up for the spookiest time of year! And today, we're going to learn all about ravens! Ravens may give you the creepy crawlies, but they have some awesome skills and behaviors that make them very clever...

Up in the air, it's a bird, it's a plane, it's... A SQUID!

Hopefully this course has gotten you excited about all the things we can do with engineering. If so, today we’re going to try to help you answer a very important question: how do you become an engineer? What are the steps? What kinds of...

Have you ever wondered what those things are on airplane wings? You know, those little angled bits of metal? Watch to learn what they are and how they’re used!

Learning to throw a boomerang properly takes a lot of practice. And aerodynamics.

In the spring, just after a heavy rainfall, male and female fire ants swarm the skies for a day of romance, known as the nuptial flight. Thousands of reproduction-capable ants take part in a mating frenzy, and for one successfully mated...

India and China have so many people today because they’re good for farming and big, but they’ve always been that way, so they’ve actually had a huge proportion of Earth’s people for thousands of years.

As we get ready to watch that big football game that my lawyers tell me I'm not allowed to say the name of, let's celebrate a champion of the bird world: Stealthy and silent owls! Learn how owls fly so silently, how they see in the dark,...

Drone technology has advanced a lot in the last few decades, but our flying robots still have a lot to learn about navigation, agility, and adaptability from animals that have been flying for millions of years.

We’ve invented airplanes, trains, automobiles and so much more to ease the process of traveling. But many animals have adapted their own techniques for energy efficient travel that don’t require invention!