How is it that bugs take no fall damage?
In: Physics
Fall damage depends on potential and kinetic energy produced by a body. Potential and kinetic energy is some kind of energy in a body with what, it can exert force to damage other things.
And potential and kinetic energy depends on two factors:
– Weight of a body and falling speed
If something with more weight falls. It would fall with more falling speed. Because gravity acts upon large and dense objects more strongly. Due to its large falling speed, it gains large enough potential and kinetic energy to cause it to fall with more exerting force and damage itself.
Similarly, bugs have less weight and due to its less weight, it falls with less speed and get less potential and kinetic energy and get less fall damage.
Note: Potential energy and kinetic energy are different terms. But they are both produced in a body when it falls.
Bugs weigh very little. The impact force you take from falling is your mass times your velocity. Because bugs weigh so little, they have little mass to strike the ground with. Also, because of how little they weigh, they suffer more resistance from the air, which does a lot to slow and gentle their impact.
In short, the smaller the creature, the less damaging the fall. Bugs do take fall damage, but very minimal and their hard exoskeletons tend to absorb it quite well, with the exception of, IIRC, a spider that tends to break open when hitting the ground. You can basically drop a chick off the roof of a two story building and it will more or less be all good, getting up confused, shakes itself off, and continues on. If you drop a much heavier human, you’ll get broken bones, bruising, internal bleeding, organ damage, even death if they hit their head.
Their terminal velocity is slow enough that they dont hit the ground with a lot of force.
Gravity isnt much of a danger to them, however, surface tension is. A lot of insects trying to drink water can get sucked in and die, whereas for us its no issue.
All your weight really means is the measurement of gravity on your person. So the bigger you are the more gravity pulls you down.
Insects don’t take “fall damage” because they don’t weigh much. So when they are being pulled towards the earth it’s not with as much force as it pulls a human. So since they don’t fall fast they don’t get hurt.
Terminal velocity.
There is a maximum speed things will fall depending on their size and weight and aerodynamics. Air resistance will be enough to keep them moving at a steady speed…
Most bugs are small enough…and drag against the air molecules enough… that their terminal velocity never gets fast enough to do serious harm to their bodies.
How can I flick a bug and it be totally fine? That’s like getting smacked by a tree and shrugging it off
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7KSfjv4Oq0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7KSfjv4Oq0)
This is a good explanation and a pretty cool video to watch on the topic.
It’s like the saying goes. The fall doesn’t kill you, it’s the sudden stop.
Newton: an object at rest tends will stay at rest unless acted on by an outside force. And object in motion will stay in motion unless acted on by an outside force. This is momentum.
The faster you fall the more momentum your body gains. When the force of that momentum exceeds the strength of you bones/structural integrity of your body, when you stop your body’s own momentum will crush it against the ground. Because the momentum is greater than the strength of the body, the body breaks.
Bugs have very little mass and relatively large surface area to that mass so they have a very low terminal velocity (maximum speed they can fall/point at which the force of air resistance which increases as speed through the air does, matches the force of gravity so you stop accelerating). Their mass and terminal velocity is so low that they don’t have enough momentum at their maximum falling speed to exceed the strength of and break their body.
So no matter how far they fall they never get hurt on landing.
Lease cutter ants use this to their advantage by purposely jumping out of trees when they want to get down because they can’t be damaged from the fall.
Tarantulas are very susceptible to injuries by falling as far as I know. So pet tarantula enclosures should not be built with steep falls. Yes. Even the smaller falls that could happen inside the enclosure. They could result in abdominal bleeding or broken legs.
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