“Birds can dynamically alter the shape of their wings during flight, although how this is accomplished is poorly understood,” the researchers wrote in one of the studies they published. So, they used dead pigeons to study how birds bend and extend their wings to change their shape.

What they found was that the angle of a bird’s wrist and finger determines the alignment of its flight feathers and, hence, the shape of its wings. It’s by pulling their wrist and finger together or spreading them apart that pigeons can manage tight turns and fly through turbulence. The researchers then used that knowledge to build a remote-controlled robotic pigeon — they even used real feathers for the machine.

Scientists could use the machine to study bird flight. Any future findings can then be used to build even better drones that can reach places and fly in conditions more standard unmanned flying systems can’t.