By Susan Milius
View a video of an artificial butterfly in flight
![](https://i0.wp.com/www.sciencenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/12500.jpg?resize=300%2C229&ssl=1)
A new artificial butterfly is revealing the importance of wing veins and of upsy-downsy waverings to swallowtails’ flight.
The tiny machine flaps a pair of wings made of thin polymer film and can stay airborne for four or five meters at a time, until the coiled rubber band powering it unwinds, Hiroto Tanaka of Harvard University and Isao Shimoyama of the University of Tokyo report in the June Bioinspiration & Biomimetics.