Hummingbirds vs. Micro UAVs: Who's the Best Flyer?

[spectruman]

http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/aerial-robots/stanford-study-hummingbirds-micro-uavs#.U-KFb-ugHxk.hackernews

[SAI_Peregrinus]

"it is a surprise that we're actually getting close in efficiency"

Not really that surprising. Evolution doesn't have any guiding intelligence, so it tends to be very, very slow. Engineers can design things quite quickly.