and wanted to add a small point. I, too, have often heard how it is supposedly “impossible” and found your answer very interesting and informative. I went on a random Bee kick a few months back and spent many hours researching them on the web, so the thorax thing I had heard, but the history of the supposition was all new to me. The one thing I thought worth mentioning was regarding the physics (of which I have a basic understanding, but nothing major): though I cannot remember now where I read it, it is my understanding the the actual aerodynamics were only recently truly understood (within the last 50 years or so) both because of the relatively new understanding of fluid dynamics (apparently the air currents, specifically the vortices and turbulence, that create the lift are incredibly complex) and the especially small scale at which they take place (making them all the more difficult to observe and measure.
Like I said, I’m no physics professor, so I really cannot provide a better explanation than the one above, but I thought that aspect of the situation had a significant enough bearing on the question that it was worth mentioning.
I don’t have anything to add other than to welcome Dave to the board and thank him for a very good first post. (He even included the link to the column!)
There was an article along these lines in Air and Space Magazine several years ago. Insect flight is especially interesting as an example of flying in what I think they called the “hyper-stall regime.” The insect wing spends a lot of time in a stalled condition that would cause most airplanes to stop flying. And yet the insect is generating lots of lift by throwing off those vortices you mentioned. The article made me think aerodynamicists (if that’s a word) were keen to learn the insects’ trick, but I don’t know what came of it.
I gather there’s a lot more hyper-stall flying nowadays at airshows and whatnot, but I think most of that is a result of vectored thrust, for jets, or just plain hanging on the propeller for stunt planes. I’m not sure it owes a lot to the study of insect wings. But maybe they’re cooking stuff up at NASA that I haven’t heard about. (I don’t read as many magazines as I used to.)