A team of physicists from the USA has devoted research to the mechanism of landing a blue fly on the ceiling. It turned out that this process can be divided into 4 stages. It is characteristic of many flying insects, but it is still not perfected and requires non-trivial efforts from creatures.
The main question the scientists were interested in was: does the fly turn over immediately before contact with the ceiling surface – or does it do so in advance during flight?
It is known that insects can fix themselves on a horizontal plane upside down by special suction cups on their legs (pulvillae). A group of biophysicists led by Bo Cheng found that the landing algorithm is built somewhat more complex than expected.
A videographer was used for the study. The device recorded in detail all the movements of the wings, limbs and body of the insect during landing. Additionally, the fly’s visual perception of the surface was analysed and the mechanism based on this was used to estimate the approximate time until contact with the ceiling.
