300 million years ago, before birds, bats,
and even pterodactyls insects were flying. They were the first
animals to lift themselves into the air and they're still the most successful
flyers on earth. i've been putting a bunch of insects on
this little platform here and filming how they get themselves
up into the air and off into their flights. I haven't really been doing this
for any research purposes, i've just been trying to find the most
interesting insects I could and film them in a way that I don't think anybody
else has. So, I collected most of the insects in
this video by setting up a black light. A lot of night-active, flying insects
will come to these lights. And from this i've been able to collect
and film insects from over seven different orders.
This is the filming set, set up in my laundry room. Each of the clips you'll
see in this video were filmed here at a rate of 3200 frames per second.
I specifically avoided filming any insects you might have seen flight
footage of before. So in this video there're no butterflies, there're no bees, there's not even a fly. I only went after
the weird stuff. Like here: this was my half successful
attempt at getting a plume moth to fly on camera.
I couldn't get it to fly in-frame without prodding it with a paintbrush. These are really unique moths and I love
how it just seems to barely be able to lift itself into the air. And look at its
feather like hind wings! I'm gonna have to keep trying to film
those moths. They deserve their own video. Okay, so let's start with an iconic
summertime insect. One you've probably seen flying before,
but definitely not like this. This is the common eastern firefly or
lightning bug. Like most beetles getting ready to fly,
the first step is lifting the hardened, protective fore wings that are called elytra.
One interesting thing that this footage shows is that the elytra flap during
flight too. In getting off the ground, the middle
legs are just barely out of the path of the wings
as they flap nearly 180 degrees around the body.
The wings actually brush up against each other at the top and bottom of the
stroke. In these scenes the beetles are beating
their wings at a frequency of about 62 full up and down strokes per second. This is a painted lichen moth, two flight
sequences of the same individual, superimposed. This might be my new favorite piece of
insect footage. The lighting and the slow- motion make it almost unreal,
like it's animated or made out of clay or something. One of the things I love in this
sequence is seeing how flexible the wings are.
Here at the end of the downstroke, when the wings are turning back into the
upstroke, the tips of the four wings collapse and
roll under the wings. They flatten back out as the wings are
lifted back up and remain flat for the whole downstroke.
Some moths, like this leaf roller, get into the air by combining the downstroke
of their wings with a jump powered by the middle and hind legs.
Their wingtips also flex and fold at the beginning of the upstroke
when they're being raised back up. Now this is a rosy maple moth. It doesn't
jump or roll its wing tips up like those others,
but honestly who really cares? Just look at it. It's clearly the best moth. It looks like a flying muppet. Like after
it flies off screen here it's probably going to go all the way
back to living its life on Fraggle Rock. Okay, now for some more uncommon stuff.
This is a giant stone fly, also known as a salmon fly.
And look at this thing, it has a spectacular jump, absolutely gigantic
hind wings, and goes straight up and over right into a
beautiful swan dive. Stoneflies actually have a pretty
interesting place in the field of insect flight research.
Immature stoneflies are aquatic and adults hang around the water too. Adults of some species are known to use
their wings for skimming themselves across the water. Because the body of the insect is
supported by water, surface skimming can be achieved with rudimentary wings,
ones are actually incapable of powering flight. So, surface skimming has been proposed as an example of how early insect
proto-wings might have still benefited the insects
even before flight. Another aquatic insect is this mayfly.
Mayflies are an ancient lineage of insects dating back to at least the
permian, over 250 million years ago. They are different from all the other
flying insects in this video in two ways: they are unable to fold their wings back
over their body, and the muscles that power the wings directly attach
at the base of the wing. All the other insects here flap their wings through
indirect muscle movements that contract and expand the thorax.
Currently, stoneflies and mayflies are the source of a debate in the insect
fossil record. In 2011 a description of this fossil was
published. It dates back to around 305 million
years ago. It's the oldest full-body impression of
a winged insect. The original researchers described it as
a mayfly, however others have claimed that it actually
might better resemble a surface-skimming stonefly. This is the biggest insect I filmed, it's another one that spends most of its life
as an immature aquatic organism. This is a fish fly.
Right after takeoff this individual is flapping its wings at a relatively slow
rate of 11 beats per second. That's in the frequency range of what a
big slow flapping butterfly does. And they're usually using their wings to
alternate between a powered flight and a glide. The fore wing of that fishfly is 37.6
millimeters long. That's nearly 10 times bigger than the 4
millimeter long wing of the next insect, an aphid. Unlike most
of the other insects in this video it doesn't seem to jump to get into the
air. Wing flapping just kind of picks it straight up off the ground. The oddest part about this flight is
that every upstroke rotates the body counterclockwise.
Like watch the sequence again and notice that on every upstroke the body ratchets
backwards, like the second hand of a clock in
reverse. Here're three more sequences, superimposed, in all of them you can see the same body rotation on every upstroke of the
wing beat. This last insect is a scorpion fly. I
love how this one gets into the air, throws its leg up, and then just turns
and kind of stares down the camera. That scorpion-like tail means that this
individual is a male. Although it kinda looks like a stinger,
that's actually a mating appendage. Isn't slow motion flight footage the
best? I'll leave you with one more sequence over the credits.
This is a green lacewing. This one's actually been filmed and studied before,
that's why it didn't make the main part of this video.
Before you go, be sure to subscribe to the channel for more videos and
thanks for watching this one.
Wasn't expecting that to be so neat.