How do mosquitoes fly in the rain?
JUN 05, 2012
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.026081
Science : A raindrop can weigh 50 times as much as a mosquito, yet the winged insects thrive in rainy regions. To find out why, a group of researchers at Georgia Tech trapped mosquitoes in a cage, shot jets of water into the cage to simulate raindrops, and filmed the mosquitoes with a high-speed video camera. Although the mosquitoes would pitch and roll when struck by a drop, none were wiped out even after sustaining a direct hit. The researchers, whose results were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, determined that it is the mosquitoes’ strong exoskeleton and low mass that protect them. Because a raindrop is so big compared to a mosquito, the drop ends up losing very little of its momentum when it strikes one, and therefore it imparts very little actual force.
© 2012 American Institute of Physics
