Drought-stressed plants let out ultrasonic distress cries that moths use to avoid plants that can’t support their offspring. In ideal circumstances, a plant is constantly pulling water up from the Keep reading
Tag: moths
How Moths Confuse Bats
When your predators use echolocation to locate you, it pays to have an ultrasonic deterrence. So, many species of ermine moths have structures on their wings known as tymbals. These Keep reading
Moths in Flight
Moths and butterflies are such unique fliers among insects. Compared to their bodies, their wings are often enormous. High-speed video reveals the complex motions of their wing strokes. Some species Keep reading
Why Moths Are Slow Fliers
Hawkmoths and other insects are slow fliers compared to birds, even ones that can hover. To understand why these insects top out at 5 m/s, researchers simulated their flight from Keep reading
Moths and Beetles in Flight
Watching insects take flight in high-speed video is always mesmerizing. So often their wings look too small and fragile to lift their bulbous bodies, but they manage the feat easily. Keep reading
Absorbing Sound with Moth Wings
Manmade soundproofing tends to be porous and bulky or very limited in the range of frequencies it can handle. In contrast, moths are natural absorbers of ultrasound, having evolved to Keep reading
Moths in Flight
As student engineers, we often use fixed-wing aircraft to build our intuition for flight, but nature has so many other incredible examples to offer. Here we see high-speed video of Keep reading
Hawk Moth Hovering
The hawk moth (Manduca sexta) flies quite similarly to a hummingbird, able to hover over the flowers from which it feeds by rotating its wings as it flaps. This constant Keep reading