Almost every butterfly I see bobs up and down while they fly. Do they have the same fluid system for balance that we do? How do they navigate the world and what is their system for balance?
Edit: SOLVED by: u/jsonnen
In: Biology
They do not have an inner ear, which is our fluid filled organ that gives us orientation. The reason that you get dizzy after spinning is that while you may have stopped the fluid in your ear has not. this fluid interacts with tiny hairs that give you a sense of motion. A butterfly orientation is achieved by their antennae.
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I assume their “brain” already understands that default motion and corrects for it.
I’m basing this on pigeons, and how they bob their heads forward and back dramatically when they walk. scientists did an experiment where they put a pigeon on wheels, and it’s perceptions got all messed up because it was expecting that forward-back swing.
As people said above, butterflies do not have an inner ear so they would not experience dizziness as we would.
As to how they navigate the world, they are very visually oriented animals and mainly use their eyes to stabilise their flight.
Some can even use the polarisation pattern in the sky to navigate. Polarised light is light that is “aligned” in a specific direction, and naturally in the sky there is a pattern of polarisation due to how sunlight interacts with the atmosphere.
They would use their antennae and smell to find the right tree to lay eggs on or to find food, but orientation and stabilisation is visual.
Insects have special organs called halteres situated behind their wings that they as their primary system for balance. They are evolved from wings and they bob up and down generating small gyroscopic forces that the insect nervous system uses for balance. It’s a different approach than the vertebrate inner ear, but it achieves the same goal. Like us, vision and other sensory systems likely act as supplementary balance senses.
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