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Photo: LiveScience |
Unlike jet planes that retract their landing gear while in flight, some species of bees extend theirs while buzzing.
Orchid bees extend their hind legs forward to reach maximum speed, a recent study has discovered. The legs also generate lift, helping the bees maintain balance and preventing them from rolling over.
“The hind legs function similarly to aircraft wings, which may explain why they generate lift as well“, said Stacey Combes from the University of California, Berkeley.
Just earlier this year, other researchers elucidated how bees fly. To examine their flying mechanisms in detail, Combes and her colleagues conducted experiments with bees flying in an outdoor wind tunnel, lured by scented oils.
They found that as speed increased, bees extended their hind legs to maintain balance. However, at the highest speeds, even those fully extended legs reached a limit and lost balance. This instability was attributed to the aerodynamic forces acting on their legs.
“They roll over when they tilt to the side and often flip up and down, crashing toward the ground“, Combes noted.
The researchers concluded that the speed of bees is limited not by muscular force or wing-beating ability, but by their capacity to maintain body balance in unstable conditions.
“The swinging legs help them maintain bodily balance, similar to how a person must extend their arms while spinning on ice“, Combes explained.
Understanding the flying mechanisms of bees could assist engineers in designing small aircraft for research, rescue, or surveillance purposes.
T. An
