• About the blog
  • About Sedeer
  • Series
    • Words of Science
    • Discussions
    • Foraging
    • Natural Selection
    • QM Workshop
  • Contact me
  • Accumulating Glitches
  • Collective Marvelling

Inspiring Science

~ Casting light on great ideas

Inspiring Science

Tag Archives: flies

Live 3-D X-ray video of a fly’s muscles in mid-flight

02 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by sedeer in Arthropods, Form, Insects

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

animals, biology, flies, flight, Insecta, muscles, P, Popular science, science, video

Flies are incredibly agile on the wing, pulling off twists and turns that outstrip anything we’ve accomplished. Their flight is powered by two pairs of large muscles in their thorax which contract rhythmically to make their wings beat anywhere between 100 and 1000 times per second. Power is transferfed from these muscles to the wings by a hinge made of an intricate collection of steering muscles. Although the steering muscles make up less than 3% of the flight muscle mass, they very effectively direct the force produced by the larger muscles, thus guiding the fly’s aerial acrobatics. In a paper appearing in PLoS Biology, a team of scientists from the UK and Switzerland used a particle accelerator to record high-speed X-ray images of blowflies (Calliphora vicina) in flight, producing a 3-D video of the inside of the fly showing the muscles moving as it manuevered. Continue reading →

Search

Donate Button with Credit Cards
Follow @inspiringsci
Follow Inspiring Science on WordPress.com

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 2,099 other followers

RSS Feed RSS - Posts

Ongoing discussions

  • jaymes90 on Do ants really count their steps?
  • “We Back, Baby”: Inside Day Trip, the First Post-Pandemic Music Festival in Southern California - Rhythm 86 on No secrets by the lakeside: how water affects sound
  • “We Back, Baby”: Inside Day Trip, the First Post-Pandemic Music Festival in Southern California – SHINKISAURUS on No secrets by the lakeside: how water affects sound
  • "We Again, Child": Inside Day Journey, the First Submit-Pandemic Music Competition in Southern California - EDM.com | Real Raw News today on No secrets by the lakeside: how water affects sound
  • “We Back, Baby”: Inside Day Trip, the First Post-Pandemic Music Festival in Southern California – Free Download Music on No secrets by the lakeside: how water affects sound
  • “We Back, Baby”: Inside Day Trip, the First Post-Pandemic Music Festival in Southern California – Binary Star Radio on No secrets by the lakeside: how water affects sound
  • “We Back, Baby”: Inside Day Trip, the First Post-Pandemic Music Festival in Southern California – EDM.com – iDea HUNTR on No secrets by the lakeside: how water affects sound
  • I want you to hear me loud and clear – IntentionallyMonika on No secrets by the lakeside: how water affects sound

What’s popular now?

  • No secrets by the lakeside: how water affects sound
  • The Ten-legged Spider
  • Telling left from right: which side gets the heart?
  • Do ants really count their steps?
  • Book review: We Are Our Brains

Blogs to check out

  • Accumulating Glitches
  • alternative viewpoints
  • AntyScience
  • Baldscientist
  • Eyes on the Environment
  • Language Log
  • Letters of Note
  • naked capitalism
  • Raising My Rainbow
  • The Scorpion and the Frog
  • The Smaller Majority

Copyright

Creative Commons License
All text and original images by Sedeer El-Showk. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Thanks to

  • Arkadia International Bookshop
  • The Book Hive
  • The Television and Movie Store
  • Rönnels Antikvariat
Inspiring Science is part of:
  • Collective Marvelling
  • SciComm Network

I'm on ScienceSeeker-DNA

Nature
Blog Network

Categories

Archives

Blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • Inspiring Science
    • Join 2,099 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Inspiring Science
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar