"Honeybees use their wings for water surface locomotion (PNAS). Here’s an interesting paper about another skill honeybees have. When trapped in water, they can “hydroplane” with their legs
underwater to get higher where their wings can help them escape.
The science is fine until the last paragraph, when the authors take their Darwine break and start confabulating mythoids.
Any insect using “preflight locomotion” to fly would quickly drown. What was it flapping, its legs? If the animal had surface tension, like a water strider, why don’t we see those evolving flight?
The authors even state that it is “unlikely that the honeybee’s flight evolved from their water surface locomotion” (that’s an understatement!), they dream on, visualizing the bee’s behavior as some kind of atavism of “early preflight locomotion.”
Ask yourself if the science of this article was improved in any way by the Darwin clutter."
CEH
And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.
Genesis 1:31
The science is fine until the last paragraph, when the authors take their Darwine break and start confabulating mythoids.
More broadly, winged locomotion on a water surface could be an evolutionarily important category of biolocomotion. One of the hypotheses on the origin of insect flight is that flight evolved from the locomotion on a water surface, on which the weight of an organism is offset by either buoyancy or surface tension. While it is unlikely that the honeybee’s flight evolved from their water surface locomotion, the mechanism of hydrofoiling may have biomechanical resemblances to early preflight locomotion.This is absurd and uncalled for. Powered flight of any kind requires massive remodeling of an animal’s entire body: its weight, its aerodynamics, its brain software, and a host of other things.
Any insect using “preflight locomotion” to fly would quickly drown. What was it flapping, its legs? If the animal had surface tension, like a water strider, why don’t we see those evolving flight?
The authors even state that it is “unlikely that the honeybee’s flight evolved from their water surface locomotion” (that’s an understatement!), they dream on, visualizing the bee’s behavior as some kind of atavism of “early preflight locomotion.”
Ask yourself if the science of this article was improved in any way by the Darwin clutter."
CEH
And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.
Genesis 1:31