why do bugs like mosquitoes not die when we hit them while they’re flying?
In: 3
Acceleration.
As they say, it’s not the fall that kills you, it’s hitting the ground.
Take a parkour artist for instance. A parkour artist can fall from great heights without suffering serious damage, even when most normal people would be injured by the drop. This is because they know how to land properly, which is to say, absorb the impact slowly.
If you hit asphalt with straight legs, all the energy is absorbed at once. This, however, is not what you want, as now, your bones are subjected to a big burst of energy coming in all at once. If, in contrast, you bend your knees and allow them to act like a spring as you land, the time you take to come to a full stop is longer. It might still hurt, but the odds of injury are much lower this way.
With the insect it’s a similar thing. If you hit an insect mid flight, it’s subjected to the same energy it would be subject to when hit against a solid surface. However, if you hit it in mid air, the insect gets flung around, but it’s a flying insect, they can stand a bit of airflow around them, and since their tiny bodies only allow for a very rudimentary brain, they’re not always smart enough to avoid a collision, so instead they evolved to be able to take the occasional impact. Therefore, unless you hit the insect at really high speeds, it can take the blow, because it just tumbles around a bit until it can regain control.
Hitting it against a hard surface, however, that’s a different thing. The insects body has no way to absorb the energy it experiences slowly, since it has no room left to do so. It has to take the force all at once. And doing that is enough to kill it, even if the blow wouldn’t be anywhere near fatal in mid air.
Latest Answers