Shaved bat wings show sensory hairs help manage flight

Researchers have rediscovered a set of sensory hairs on the wings of bats, shown that they respond to light puffs of air, and found that getting rid of them alters the way bats fly.

Tracking experiments showed that the bats that lacked patches of hair tended to fly faster than usual and took wider turns, possibly as a result. The authors suggest that, in the absence of any sense of air flow, the bats think they're suffering the equivalent of a stall, and speed up to try to compensate.