Research

Featherwings in Flight

Scanning electron microscopy image of a featherwing beetle.

The featherwing beetle is tiny, less than half a millimeter in length. At that scale, flying is a challenge, with air’s viscosity dominating the forces the insect must overcome. The featherwing beetle, as its name suggests, has feather-like wings rather than the membranes larger beetles use. But a new study shows that these odd wings work surprisingly well.

The beetle’s bristled wings flap with an exaggerated figure-8 motion, with the wings clapping together in front of and behind the insect. The beetle expends less energy moving its feathery wings than it would if they were solid, and it moves its wing covers at the same time to counter each stroke and keep its body steady. (Image and research credit: S. Farisenkov et al.; video credit: Nature; submitted by Kam-Yung Soh)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.