One of the main ways of movement of many representatives of a class of insects is flight. Thanks to ability to fly the insects can find to themselves food, sexual partners for pairing, escape from enemies, migrate and, after all, be settled on the planet. Not for nothing insects are the most numerous group of animals on the planet Earth.
According to the researches conducted by entomologists, insects are the first organisms on Earth which managed to rise in air, having developed at themselves unique ability to flight. It is difficult to believe in it, but more than 360 million years ago some representatives of a class of insects already flew over the planet Earth. Then there was the unique continent – the supercontinent of the Pan-gay uniting almost all land of Earth.
Insects in general are the only class of invertebrate animals who can fly. Emergence of wings in them made them fast and maneuverable beings. Besides, they gained ability to regular migrations, and their general behavior became complicated. With the advent of ability to fly also possibilities for reproduction, food and defense against predators increased.Flight of insects outright interests scientific minds. Today the mechanism and the principles of flight of these creations are of huge interest to applied bionics and entomology and also to systematization and comparative physiology. Some people compare flight of insects to flight of the plane. It not absolutely precisely comparison. The fact is that insects for the flight use air flows while the arising turbulence is very dangerous to the plane.
How do insects fly?As it was already told above, for the flights the insects use powerful air flows and if decrease in resistance of air is of great importance for the plane (for this purpose wings of the plane are not mobile and streamline), then for insects they – is not present. On the contrary, their wings during flight are in the constant movement. For this reason the turbulence to them is not terrible. Insects are able to make several types of flight. The basic is, of course, the active (waving) flight. Besides they use the so-called forward flight which is quite maneuverable, fast, steady and economic. Quite often insects just hang in air. It weeds too, allowing to keep invariable the position in space. Like birds, insects practice also the passive flight which is subdivided into parachuting, dive, planning and soaring. To make all these types of flights, these surprising creations have to be "equipped" with special "devices".
What "devices" help insects to fly?
Wings. They represent lamellar outgrowths of covers which directly connect to the whole complex of the muscles serving them. Generally insects have two pairs of wings: front and back. Wings consist of the thinnest Krylova of a plate (membrane) which fastens on firm veins. Veins, in turn, form a strong basis of a wing. Muscles covered. Unlike wings of birds and bats, wings of insects are deprived of own muscles therefore they are set in motion by pectoral muscles. Longitudinal back muscles, pleyralny muscles, longitudinal ventral muscles and dorsoventral muscles concern them.
Eighth wonder of the world
Scientists call miracle technology of flight of insects. For example, the ordinary mosquito in air is capable to catch up with little effort with a female, having forced it to go down. The expert from the American university in the State of Florida Gerry Butler could determine the speed of this mosquito by the bullet which is released from a gun. It turned out that the insect managed to catch up with this bullet in air at a speed of 144 km/h! Amazingly!