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Clap and fling, or the Weis-Fogh mechanism, discovered by the Danish zoologist Torkel Weis-Fogh, is a lift generation method utilized during small insect flight. [17] As insect sizes become less than 1 mm, viscous forces become dominant and the efficacy of lift generation from an airfoil decreases drastically. Starting from the clap position ...
The origin of insect flight remains obscure, since the earliest winged insects currently known appear to have been capable fliers. Some extinct insects (e.g. the Palaeodictyoptera ) had an additional pair of winglets attached to the first segment of the thorax , for a total of three pairs.
There are two basic aerodynamic models of insect flight. Most insects use a method that creates a spiralling leading edge vortex. [19] [20] Some very small insects use the fling-and-clap or Weis-Fogh mechanism in which the wings clap together above the insect's body and then fling apart. As they fling open, the air gets sucked in and creates a ...
The muscles that control flight in insects can take up to 10% to 30% of the total body mass. The muscles that control flight vary with the two types of flight found in insects: indirect and direct. Insects that use first, indirect, have the muscles attach to the tergum instead of the wings, as the name suggests.
The second tagma, the thorax, bears the wings and contains the flight muscles on the second segment, which is greatly enlarged; the first and third segments have been reduced to collar-like structures, and the third segment bears the halteres, which help to balance the insect during flight.
Like a moth to flame, many scientists and poets have long assumed that flying insects were simply, inexorably drawn to bright lights. Rather than being attracted to light, researchers believe that ...
Insects are the only invertebrates that can achieve sustained powered flight; insect flight evolved just once. Many insects are at least partly aquatic, and have larvae with gills; in some species, the adults too are aquatic. Some species, such as water striders, can walk on the surface of water. Insects are mostly solitary, but some, such as ...
Possibly the original butter-fly. [6] A male brimstone (Gonepteryx rhamni) in flight.The Oxford English Dictionary derives the word straightforwardly from Old English butorflēoge, butter-fly; similar names in Old Dutch and Old High German show that the name is ancient, but modern Dutch and German use different words (vlinder and Schmetterling) and the common name often varies substantially ...