I live on the 17th floor and laughed at my girlfriend’s insistence of keeping the damn screen door closed at all times. “We’re up way to high to worry about bugs getting in, silly girl.” I pompously stated.
Much to her delight, several flies and mosquitos have taken advantage of my misplaced complacency and are happily buzzing around the apartment. I have since noticed spiderwebs outside the windows of my co-worker’s 23rd floor offices. “Must be bugs up here for them to eat.” I mused to myself.
My question (finally) is, are there a lot of bugs up around a hundred plus feet above the ground? It would seem to me that the vast majority of bugs would exist within 10 feet of the ground, but I stand to be corrected.
I’ve seen several bugs at well over a thousand feet AGL flying in aircraft. I’ve often wondered what the hell they were doing up there as well. They make a mess of your windshield in the summertime, for sure.
Yeah, there’s lots. One often sees flocks of swifts and swallows actively feeding - pursuing flying insects - hundreds of feet up. In fact, there’s a name for this: aerial plankton.
Just had lunch on the 95th floor of the John Hancock building in Chicago a few days ago, and we all noted dozens of spider webs filled with insects on the outside of the windows.
During the dry season in Bangkok there were mosquitoes everywhere. I even noticed that they were in our office, which was on the 20-23rd floors of an office tower. The windows don’t open. So one day, coming in from lunch, I noticed some of the little bloodsuckers riding up in the elevator with me. I am sure that they also came up in the through the stairwells. As Dr. Malcom said, “life will find a way.”
Alright, I’m man enough to admit that there may be “a lot” of bugs up high, but (Geez, tough question here) about what percentage does this represent?
There’s obviously a great number of bugs up there. As an aside, ninety-five floors must take literally generations of spiders to climb, what do their prey eat?
And, come to think of it, all those bats hardly ever land on the ground and they eat a whole mess of insects, but I maintain that those damn flies, mosquitos, etc gotta EAT sometime so they must stick pretty close to at least the treetops.
I still stand by my original statement that the vast majority of insects must live their lives if not within ten feet of the ground at least fifty.
Jeez, phreesh ya never heard of updrafts or thermals? Especially by open fields or big buildings, they can carry airplanes up 500 feet in a few seconds! Bugs are a snap! And when the monarchs and dragonflies make their rounds (as they’re doing now) I see many of them soar over 100 feet in the air. I’d wager most bugs do a little joyriding in their lifetimes and soar higher than 50 feet, even if they spend most time near the ground.
Although I don’t have a link to show, I have read that spiders can and do migrate by making use of updrafts, etc. and have been known to reach altitudes in the 10,000 ft range.
Yes - young spiders climb up on an object like a blade of grass and spin out a long strand of silk. When the wind catches it, they are carried high aloft and can travel hundreds - maybe thousands - of miles.
Yes - young spiders climb up on an object like a blade of grass and spin out a long strand of silk. When the wind catches it, they are carried high aloft and can travel hundreds - maybe thousands - of miles. **
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If memory serves, in one part of Sir David Attenborough’s Life on Earth series from 1986, he went soaring up to about 40,000 feet in a balloon, equipped with what was basically a vacuum cleaner with cheesecloth stretched somewhere across the pipe. Sucked in a bunch of air up there, and then showed all the little teensy-weensy flies, spiders, and other insects nabbed (seen only through a microscope, if I’m remembering correctly).
Dave W. http://members.aol.com/psorsite/
“My dream is of a day where every SDMB poster will have a quote of mine in their sig.” - Arnold Winkelried
I used to fly open cockpit. Had several “close encounters” with insects (I presume they were insects) up to 1200 feet above ground. Not sure what, exactly, they were since it was impossible to identify the goo I scraped off my face. I did eventually start flying with a full-face visor, which mainly moved the problem to an inch in front of my nose as opposed to directly on my face.
I’m also a lot more cautious about opening the windows on the Cessna since that time a wasp decided to board at 3,000 feet. She spent the rest of the flight seated on the back of baggage compartment taking a rest, which was just fine with me, but I was sweating all the way to the runway.