Insect Flight – Stunt Flyers

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ambience: housefly, fly in lab

If you try to capture one bare-handed you’ll confirm that the ordinary housefly is a marvel of bioengineering a skillful aviator capable of mind-boggling aero-acrobatics. But how flies accomplish these feats is enough to keep the minds of researchers buzzing. I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet. Michael Dickinson is a professor of Bioengineering and Biology at the California Institute of Technology.

“I call myself a neuroethologist, which is someone who studies how brains control behavior. And the model that I choose to study is the fly, which seems like a pretty mundane thing that we see everyday. But upon closer inspection it’s actually a fascinating system that’s not so simple. The questions that really interest me are how very, very complicated things work. And in the case of a fly, the explanation of how a fly flies really depends not simply upon how its brain works, or how its muscles work, or how its wings generate aerodynamic forces, but in the interaction among all those processes. So, what we see as just the simple fluttering of a fly moving across the room is actually a very, very complicated process involving the interactions among all of these different systems. Insects were the first animals to evolve flight and the really they’re the most successful groups of organisms in the history of the planet and much of their success is due to this remarkable flight behavior. Flies can hover, dart forward, dart backwards, land on the ceiling, take off from the ceiling — it’s absolutely extraordinary. And by studying how flies can accomplish these extraordinary feats we can learn many general principles about the design of biological systems.”

We’ll hear more about Professor Dickinson’s work with flies in future programs. Pulse of the Planet is made possible by the National Science Foundation.

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Insect Flight - Stunt Flyers

How can flies accomplish their myriad stunts? It's all in the design!
Air Date:09/15/2010
Scientist:
Transcript:

music
ambience: housefly, fly in lab

If you try to capture one bare-handed you'll confirm that the ordinary housefly is a marvel of bioengineering a skillful aviator capable of mind-boggling aero-acrobatics. But how flies accomplish these feats is enough to keep the minds of researchers buzzing. I'm Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet. Michael Dickinson is a professor of Bioengineering and Biology at the California Institute of Technology.

"I call myself a neuroethologist, which is someone who studies how brains control behavior. And the model that I choose to study is the fly, which seems like a pretty mundane thing that we see everyday. But upon closer inspection it's actually a fascinating system that's not so simple. The questions that really interest me are how very, very complicated things work. And in the case of a fly, the explanation of how a fly flies really depends not simply upon how its brain works, or how its muscles work, or how its wings generate aerodynamic forces, but in the interaction among all those processes. So, what we see as just the simple fluttering of a fly moving across the room is actually a very, very complicated process involving the interactions among all of these different systems. Insects were the first animals to evolve flight and the really they're the most successful groups of organisms in the history of the planet and much of their success is due to this remarkable flight behavior. Flies can hover, dart forward, dart backwards, land on the ceiling, take off from the ceiling -- it's absolutely extraordinary. And by studying how flies can accomplish these extraordinary feats we can learn many general principles about the design of biological systems."

We'll hear more about Professor Dickinson's work with flies in future programs. Pulse of the Planet is made possible by the National Science Foundation.

music