With a novel method of doing wildlife study, scientists in New Mexico are giving dying birds a second chance at life. Taxidermied birds are being transformed into drones by a team at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro in order to study flight. The project's director, Dr. Mostafa Hassanalian, a professor of mechanical engineering, discovered that manufactured, mechanical birds had not produced the desired outcomes. "We came up with this idea that we can use ... dead birds and make them (into) a drone," he said. "Everything is there ... we do reverse engineering." Taxidermy bird drones, which are now being tested at the university in a specially constructed cage, can be used to better understand the formation and flight patterns of flocks. According to Hassanalian, this can then be applied to the aviation sector. "If we learn how these birds manage ... energy between themselves, we can apply (that) into the future aviation industry to save more energy and save more fuel," he said. The current taxidermy bird prototype flies for a maximum of only 20 minutes, so the next stage is to figure out how to make it fly longer and conduct tests in the wild among living birds, Hassanalian said.