Posthuman Blues

How to transform your arm into a wing

Daedalus used feathers and wax -- and we all know what happened to his son when he flew too close to the sun. Instead, you could try surgery, says Samuel Poore, a reconstructive surgeon at the University of Wisconsin in Madison who has now described the steps that would be needed to transform human arms into wings.

It sounds like an idea that might come from the underground world of body-modders, who go in for filing teeth to points, implanting horns -- and even more extreme modifications. But Poore studied the mechanisms of bird flight under Ted Goslow of Brown University, Rhode Island, before he began medical school and became interested in hand surgery.

(Via Aberrant News.)