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Maximum scale for "bumblebee" flight?

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Bumblebees famously cannot fly under fixed wing aerodynamics--and they don't. Rather, they "row" the air, moving their wings back and forth and varying the pitch to push air down like a reciprocating helicopter blade.

Clearly, this style of hovering flight works at larger-than-insect scale, because it's also how hummingbirds hover. But just how big can a creature using this flight mode get?

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This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/160319. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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