Biology 3601A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Insect Flight, Spinning Wheel, Gyroscope
4 Jan 2019
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Document Summary
Insects have a whole bunch of control: complex adjustments to maintain. Direction: requires accurate positional and rotational information. Insects are capable of making accurate, fast movements e. g. moths themselves are nocturnal and fly to pollinate flower. It has a huge amount of control over its orientation in multiple different axes: among the most energetically-expensive activity in the animal kingdom. They need to do this as efficient as possible. Insect flight muscle is the most metabolically active tissue on the plant: they can generate force and use atp at a faster rate than anything. As a result, for high speed flyers, they are having a lot of control and have to be very efficient to do this. If you fly during the day, you can use your eyes to orient yourself e. g. dragonflies have really good vision and do this effectively. Halteres: fly gyroscopes: flies have these things called halteres, they are diptera, meaning that they have 2 wings all insects.
