How high can flys fly?
If you dropped a fly off of a tall building, would it be able to safely navigate to the ground? A plane?
somebody asked a very similar question about pigeons recently; I’ll find a link in a moment.
As long as there was sufficient height, most light planes would be able to dive and pick up enough airspeed to land safely (as long as there were no obstacles like other buildings in the way) - I’ve heard of planes being drop-launched from airships, so it must be possible at least.
[url=“http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?&threadid=119700”]Promised Link
And as far as most small insects are concerned; they may not even need to use their wings in order to descend safely; anything smaller and less fragile than a medium-sized beetle probably has a non-fatal terminal velocity; certainly this is the case with wolf spiders (I know they aren’t insects); they just spread out their legs and ‘parachute’ down to the ground unharmed; they don’t have enough weight to build up a dangerous speed against the air resistance.
Thanks for the link…
Sorry for not being clearer, but I meant if a fly was dropped out of a plane…
Spiders can also spin out long strands of silk in order to slow their descent. Spiders wafted on such silk strands have landed on ships quite far out to sea.
When I was at the Sears tower earlier this month the north windows were covered in little flying bugs of some kind. It didn’t occur to me to encourage them to jump.
I have read that any animal up to the size of a small mouse can be dropped any distance and land unhurt. It’s a question of surface area (causing air friction) to mass ratio. As far as high altitude flying by insects I don’t know if there is a limit to what air destiny their wings can function but it wouldn’t matter, the cold would kill them.
…so OK if a fly in a tiny thermal suit is dropped……
It probably depends on the variety of insect; if it’s one of those really tough ones from the arctic or something, then it might just become inactive for the initial (high-altitude) part of its descent and revive when it fell into warmer air. An ordinary housefly probably would be killed by the cold, although they can survive brief periods of moderate chilling, I believe.
Not true.
"Ordinary houseflys routinely hibernate in the unheated rafters of your home. That is why they tend o be the first insects you see in the spring. Most others arrive after it warms enough for their eggs to hatch so it can take a few weeks of warm weather before they start appearing. Houseflys can often be observed in the dead of winter on an unusually warm day.
Hell and buckshot! why does the server always eat the posts that I spend the most time typing? hmmm?
Rhapsody is most likely right; not any animal smaller than a mouse has a non-lethal terminal velocity (snails and crabs - even quite small ones - will probably not survive a fall of a few metres or tens of metres onto a hard surface), however for a whole lot of small arthropods it probably is substantially true, maybe for a few larger organisms too, like cats, or maybe not.