Mosquitoes be given to fly high in humid environments where rain is common , but they are n’t exactly the fearless of creatures . The distinctive raindrop weighs in at a mass about fifty metre that of your average mosquito — so how do the picayune buggers manage to survive on a showery day ?
To find out , engineer David Hu and his colleagues at Georgia Institute of Technology constructed especially designed “ rain boxes ” that let them take the escape of numerous mosquito under imitation rainy conditions .
obstinate to one urban myth , which claims that mosquitoes caught in a rainstorm actively evade incoming body of water bomb , Hu said that the mosquitoes “ showed utterly no sign of trying to avoid [ the water supply droplets ] . ”
Instead , the team ’s high - speed videos divulge that the mass of an single mosquito is actually too diminished to stimulate falling raindrop to splash ; alternatively , the raindrops simply “ deform , ” and as a result transfer very little impulse to the flying mosquitoes . As a stage of reference , Hu calculated that a raindrop lose just 2 % of its velocity after hit a mosquito , which is insufficient to dramatically interrupt the insect ’s flying , as seen in the TV above at around 00:54 .
[ arXivviaNew Scientist ]
BiologyMosquitoesPhysicsScience
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