Insects have successfully conquered most environments, in fact, they were the first animals capable of flight. They achieved it back in the Carboniferous, between 350 and 400 million years ago. At that time the immense fern forests were patrolled by enormous dragonflies up to 70 cm in wingspan, they were the famous Meganeura monyi. Those insects were, without a doubt, the largest that have flown on Earth. Since then, flying insects have not ceased to amaze us, they do so with agility and grace, with a truly marvelous ability for their small size. A flight that has notable singularities as far as the laws of aerodynamics are concerned. Related News standard No The first animal modified to have children without sex J. DE J. Researchers make female flies reproduce on their own if there are no males around them. Once activated, this capacity is transmitted from generation to generation. The key to take-off is in the eddies. In the aerodynamics of insects we can distinguish two forces: lift, which is what keeps them in the air and which they achieve thanks to the shape of their wings and the angle of attack of the flight (formed by the plane of the wing and the direction of the air flow), and the upward force, with which they achieve a rhythmic and orderly movement. If we now look at airplanes, their wings face the air in an almost horizontal position, with a small inclination, so that it can flow above and below with a uniform pressure difference. If the angle between the wing and the direction of the air were very wide, there would come a point at which lift would be lost and the plane would fall sharply, as there would be an interruption of flow and a change in pressures. In the case of insects, it seems that their anatomy prevents them from developing enough strength to take off. Nature has solved this problem through engineering: insects generate small whirlpools (vortices) in their wings that facilitate takeoff. Furthermore, the swirl regularizes the airflow at the leading edge and ensures that the flow is smooth, regardless of the wing and flight type of the insect. Once they take off, the insects make sudden changes in the path at will, both in direction and speed, thanks to the fact that they are able to optimize the angle of attack. A whole universe of solutions If we now compare their flight with that of birds, the wings of insects have an asymmetrical shape, with a front edge that is more curved than the rear edge, so that a pressure gradient can be created between the top and bottom of the wing. On the other hand, they beat their wings continuously and rapidly in a back-and-forth pattern, while birds do it up and down. Likewise, they have been able to generate a true universe of wing patterns. There are some insects, such as dragonflies and bees, that have membranous, thin and transparent eyes; others have fringed wings, as happens with spiders; There are also wings with counterweights, to achieve a certain stability, as is the case with flies; There are some insects (moths) that have scales, while others have rigid, thick or sclerotized wings. This explains the range of flight behaviors, from stationary to acrobatic: from the flight of flies, capable of remaining stably in one place by rapidly flapping their wings, to the erratic flight with which dragonflies hypnotize us. MORE INFORMATION news Yes There were only 1,200 left: The near extinction of our first ancestors was about to condemn our species to non-existence news Yes Avi Loeb confirms that the Im1 object, which fell in the Pacific in 2014, came from other stars And it is that nature never ceases to surprise us with its inexhaustible source of engineering solutions to the most diverse problems that arise.
