From the appearance of Archaeopteryx to the present, in the long evolution process of hundreds of millions of years, birds have formed many effective navigation, identification, calculation, energy conversion and other systems, and their sensitivity, efficiency, accuracy and drought resistance are amazing. People study these structural and functional principles and simulate them to improve existing or create new machinery, instruments and processes, which is an important content of bionics research.

Birds have superb flying skills. Of course, modern airplanes are far superior to birds in many performances, but they are dwarfed by the dexterity of energy saving. For example, a bird flies more than 4,000 kilometers over the ocean and loses 0.06 kilograms; Hummingbirds can not only take off and land vertically, but also take an upright posture when sucking nectar, hanging freely in the air and moving back and forth, which is extremely flexible. The research and utilization of these special functions will further improve the performance of the aircraft.

For example, wild ducks can fly leisurely at a height of 9500 meters, but people have difficulty breathing when they climb to 4500 meters. It is of great significance to study why the cerebral vessels of birds are still unblocked under the condition of thin air for human beings to live normally and prolong their life in an environment with insufficient oxygen supply.

Pigeons have made great contributions to bionics. It has a small and sensitive special structure on its leg to feel the earthquake. According to its principle, people copied a new seismograph to make earthquake prediction more accurate. Its eyes have special recognition ability, because there are six kinds of ganglion cells with specific functions on its retina: leaf brightness detector, common edge detector, convex edge detector, direction detector, vertical edge detector and horizontal detector. The electronic model of pigeon eye made by people imitating the cell structure on its retina is not as complicated and perfect as it is, but it has broad prospects in installing on early warning radar and applying it to computer processing related data.

Shanghai's water accounts for 97% of the earth's total water. At present, the artificial seawater desalination device has huge equipment, complex structure and high energy consumption. However, seabirds such as seagulls and albatrosses can secrete salt from the seawater they drink through salt glands near their eyes. Once this function is simulated, the prospect of human using the ocean will be broader.

In addition, people are developing Hawkeye system missile according to the structure of Hawkeye, which can automatically find and identify the target and track the attack when flying over the target.