"Mosquitoes take weird insect flight to new heights.
The buzzing bloodsuckers flap their long wings in narrow strokes really, really fast — more than 800 times per second in males. That’s four times faster than similarly sized insects. “The incredibly high wingbeat frequency of mosquitoes is simply mind-boggling,” says David Lentink, at Stanford University.
Still, it takes a lot of oomph and some unorthodox techniques to fly that slowly. Mosquitoes manage to stay aloft thanks primarily to two novel ways to generate lift when they rotate their wings..
The insects essentially
*recycle the energy from the wake of a preceding wing stroke and
*then tightly rotate their wings to remain in flight.
But mosquitoes rapidly flap their wings up and down around a roughly 40-degree angle on average. Such short, speedy wingbeats make it impossible to generate enough lift from leading-edge vortices to stay in the air. “We knew something funny had to be going on. We just didn’t know what,” says
Bomphrey, a biomechanist.
It turns out the insects flap their wings in a tight figure eight formation. Leading-edge vortices generate some lift as the wings briefly cut through the air horizontally. Then, as the wings start to rotate into the curve of the figure eight, they trap the wake of the previous stroke to create another series of low-pressure swirling vortices, this time along the back edge of the wing. “This doesn’t require any power. It’s a particularly economical way of generating lift,” says Bomphrey.
As the wings rotate, they also push air down, redirecting low-pressure air across the top of the wings. The wings rotate around an axis at their front edge, but if they go too far past vertical, they start to lose lift. So, the mosquito subtly shifts its wings’ turning axis from the front to the back of the wing, creating a more horizontal surface that allows the wings to continue to push air down. This also sets up the insect to benefit from the vortices along the trailing edge of the wing coming out of the turn.Switching the axis mid-rotation “is impressive, especially since mosquito nerve cells fire just once for every few wingbeats,” says Itai Cohen, at Cornell University. “Somehow this animal hasevolved a complex wing stroke that takes advantage of aerodynamic forces and the mechanical infrastructure of the wing to generate complex motions with very few signals from the brain,” he says." ScienceNews
"Somehow" evolved? (he means Time + Chance) .....how about this level of sophistication = clear cut DESIGN....For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast. Psalm 33:9
The buzzing bloodsuckers flap their long wings in narrow strokes really, really fast — more than 800 times per second in males. That’s four times faster than similarly sized insects. “The incredibly high wingbeat frequency of mosquitoes is simply mind-boggling,” says David Lentink, at Stanford University.
Still, it takes a lot of oomph and some unorthodox techniques to fly that slowly. Mosquitoes manage to stay aloft thanks primarily to two novel ways to generate lift when they rotate their wings..
The insects essentially
*recycle the energy from the wake of a preceding wing stroke and
*then tightly rotate their wings to remain in flight.
But mosquitoes rapidly flap their wings up and down around a roughly 40-degree angle on average. Such short, speedy wingbeats make it impossible to generate enough lift from leading-edge vortices to stay in the air. “We knew something funny had to be going on. We just didn’t know what,” says
It turns out the insects flap their wings in a tight figure eight formation. Leading-edge vortices generate some lift as the wings briefly cut through the air horizontally. Then, as the wings start to rotate into the curve of the figure eight, they trap the wake of the previous stroke to create another series of low-pressure swirling vortices, this time along the back edge of the wing. “This doesn’t require any power. It’s a particularly economical way of generating lift,” says Bomphrey.
As the wings rotate, they also push air down, redirecting low-pressure air across the top of the wings. The wings rotate around an axis at their front edge, but if they go too far past vertical, they start to lose lift. So, the mosquito subtly shifts its wings’ turning axis from the front to the back of the wing, creating a more horizontal surface that allows the wings to continue to push air down. This also sets up the insect to benefit from the vortices along the trailing edge of the wing coming out of the turn.Switching the axis mid-rotation “is impressive, especially since mosquito nerve cells fire just once for every few wingbeats,” says Itai Cohen, at Cornell University. “Somehow this animal has
"Somehow" evolved? (he means Time + Chance) .....how about this level of sophistication = clear cut DESIGN....For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast. Psalm 33:9
