Scientists Finally Figure Out How Bees Fly

Dominus Atheos · Post by **Dominus Atheos** » 2006-01-10 08:25pm

Scientists Finally Figure Out How Bees Fly wrote:Proponents of intelligent design, which holds that a supreme being rather than evolution is responsible for life's complexities, have long criticized science for not being able to explain some natural phenomena, such as how bees fly.

Now scientists have put this perplexing mystery to rest.

Using a combination of high-speed digital photography and a robotic model of a bee wing, the researchers figured out the flight mechanisms of honeybees.

"For many years, people tried to understand animal flight using the aerodynamics of airplanes and helicopters," said Douglas Altshuler, a researcher at California Institute of Technology. "In the last 10 years, flight biologists have gained a remarkable amount of understanding by shifting to experiments with robots that are capable of flapping wings with the same freedom as the animals."

Exotic flight

The scientists analyzed pictures from hours of filming bees and mimicked the movements using robots with sensors for measuring forces.

Turns out bee flight mechanisms are more exotic than thought.

"The honeybees have a rapid wing beat," Altshuler told LiveScience. "In contrast to the fruit fly that has one eightieth the body size and flaps its wings 200 times each second, the much larger honeybee flaps its wings 230 times every second."

This was a surprise because as insects get smaller, their aerodynamic performance decreases and to compensate, they tend to flap their wings faster.

"And this was just for hovering," Altshuler said of the bees. "They also have to transfer pollen and nectar and carry large loads, sometimes as much as their body mass, for the rest of the colony."

Try this!

In order to understand how bees carry such heavy cargo, the researchers forced the bees to fly in a small chamber filled with a mixture of oxygen and helium that is less dense than regular air. This required the bees to work harder to stay aloft and gave the scientists a chance to observe their compensation mechanisms for the additional toil.

The bees made up for the extra work by stretching out their wing stroke amplitude but did not adjust wingbeat frequency.

"They work like racing cars," Altshuler said. "Racing cars can reach higher revolutions per minute but enable the driver to go faster in higher gear. But like honeybees, they are inefficient."

The work, supervised by Caltech's Michael Dickinson, was reported last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The scientists said the findings could lead to a model for designing aircraft that could hover in place and carry loads for many purposes such as diaster surveillance after earthquakes and tsunamis. They are also pleased that a simple thing like bee flight can no longer be used as an example of science failing to explain a common phenomenon.

Proponents of intelligent design, or ID, have tried in recent years to promote the idea of a supreme being by discounting science because it can't explain everything in nature.

"People in the ID community have said that we don't even know how bees fly," Altshuler said. "We were finally able to put this one to rest. We do have the tools to understand bee flight and we can use science to understand the world around us."
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OmegaGuy · Post by **OmegaGuy** » 2006-01-10 09:26pm

Score one for science!

fuzzymillipede · Post by **fuzzymillipede** » 2006-01-10 09:51pm

So, what did the ID people think about the bees? That god holds them in the air with his godly powers?

Anguirus · Post by **Anguirus** » 2006-01-10 11:34pm

I'm sure they didn't think anything. They were just grasping at straws to "prove" that science doesn't know everything, but God...I'm sorry, the designer...does.

Because if scientists don't know everything, by all means, discourage scientists from learning more. If you can't figure it out in a few minutes, that's okay, because it must have been designed by a being who's just too dang smart for you to puzzle it out.

Makes my skin crawl.

Wild Karrde · Post by **Wild Karrde** » 2006-01-10 11:39pm

Someone with better photoshop skills please feel free to make a better one.

Anguirus · Post by **Anguirus** » 2006-01-10 11:42pm

Oh, man! I love that comic so!

Haruko · Post by **Haruko** » 2006-01-11 01:09am

I.D. adherent response: FINALLY! Now explain [insert a number of things here]. Keep it up and soon your theory might be qualified.

CJvR · Post by **CJvR** » 2006-01-11 06:44am

OmegaGuy wrote:Score one for science!

What is the current score, 1.984.987.234.213 to 0?

wolveraptor · Post by **wolveraptor** » 2006-01-11 09:39am

I have no idea how they'd incorporate such a system into modern aircraft though. Suerly they don't plan on mimicking the bee's movements exactly...

Steel · Post by **Steel** » 2006-01-11 11:02am

I think this sytem is more intended for small scale stuff, like the article says, surveilance, with your micro mechbee holding a miniature camera and flying into small places. Wings dont work very well on larger objects, and anyway, then you can get existing model helicopters into the area.

Molyneux · Post by **Molyneux** » 2006-01-11 11:02am

CJvR wrote:
OmegaGuy wrote:Score one for science!
What is the current score, 1.984.987.234.213 to 0?

Actually, I think that ID/religion actually has a fairly large negative score at this point. There's the 'value of pi' fiasco from Kings, the doors in the sky to let rain through...

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2006-01-11 04:06pm

I thought they'd already figured this out years ago. At least in regards to bumblebee flight, which shouldn't be significantly different from honeybee flight.

Ryushikaze · Post by **Ryushikaze** » 2006-01-15 06:01pm

Not only have they figured it out, they've been able to mechanically emulate it well enough to create tiny robots capable of remote controlled flight. I forget if they had already attached microcameras or were just considering it, but they mentioned that the surveillance and information collecting applications were obvious.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2006-01-15 07:31pm

For vehicles that size such as the proposed military UAVs, ornithopters are an ideal solution, especially since we can make artificial muscle and advanced MEMS now.

wilfulton · Post by **wilfulton** » 2006-01-15 11:44pm

Admiral Valdemar wrote:For vehicles that size such as the proposed military UAVs, ornithopters are an ideal solution, especially since we can make artificial muscle and advanced MEMS now.

I was hoping this would lead to a market for flying backpacks.