and maneuverable flight in complex environments,” Geoffrey Spedding, a University of Southern California professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering and one of the study’s authors, said by e-mail.

“In broad generalities, bats are characterized by a darting, sharply turning and maneuvering flight. This can be seen as they wheel about catching insects, or flit from flower to flower,” Spedding added.

Pallas’s long-tongued bat, which has the scientific name Glossophaga soricina, served as the test pilot for the research team from Sweden, Germany and the United States.

The bats flew in a wind tunnel filled with fog from a fog machine. The scientists tracked the movement of fog particles in the wake left by the flying bats to understand the aerodynamics of each wing beat.

Scientists had studied birds flying in similar windtunnels previously.

WING STRUCTURE

Powered flight has evolved three times among vertebrates in the history of life on Earth.

The first to achieve the feat were flying reptiles known as pterosaurs. They first appeared roughly 220 million years ago but died along with the dinosaurs 65 million years ago when an asteroid slammed into Earth.

Scientists think birds descended from small, feathered dinosaurs roughly 150 million years ago. They survived the asteroid impact.

Bats, which generally are nocturnal, are the only mammals to have developed powered flight -- some like flying squirrels glide but do not fly. Bats arose about 50 million years ago.

The wing structure of bats and birds differs. Birds have feathers projecting back from lightweight, fused arm and hand bones. Bats have flexible, relatively short wings with membranes stretched between