ENST: Flight: The Genius of Insects

Here is an article celebrating its 10 year anniversary on Evolution News, but it never grows old. The design of powered flight in insects can amaze us any season of the year.

This article by CEH editor David Coppedge was posted anonymously at ENST on March 20, 2015.

Think Before You Swat: The Genius of Insects
Evolution News
March 20, 2015

Remember the days when you assembled model aircraft after Christmas or a birthday, and hung them proudly from the bedroom ceiling? If you were especially skilled, you assembled ones that could actually fly. You would be the first to boast that success didn’t happen by chance. But now, imagine assembling a working model a hundred times smaller.

Avian flight is a work of genius, as Illustra’s documentary Flight amply illustrated. But in a way, miniaturization is even more a mark of genius. Packing the power of a 1960s mainframe computer into a wristwatch took decades of work by thousands of scientists and engineers at Apple and other companies. When you compare a pigeon to a gnat, and realize they are both excellent flyers, you really have to think about where all that miniaturized design comes from. Let’s look at some recent findings in insect aviation.

Beetle Control

Speaking of miniaturization, remember the geolocators attached to arctic terns in the Illustra video? Now they’re putting devices on beetles! Watch the video clip above from UC Berkeley. The one-gram electronic backpacks attached to giant flower beetles allow researchers to learn how the muscles work, and how the wings control steering….

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