Naked Science Forum
General Science => General Science => Topic started by: neilep on 05/05/2005 22:54:04
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Don't even know why I thought of asking this but it must have been brewing in the deepest recess of my brain...so, how high in the sky does your bog standard house-fly fly ?....and what about other flying insects too ?
I tried to find out, I attached a tape measure to a fly and goaded it into flying, but for some reason it didn't want to cooperate[:(]
So, if you have an answer, even an educated guestimate would be nice, that would be most helpful, else...it'll be flyspray time !!
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The average cruising height of a (European) swallow? (Monty Python nudgenudgewinkwink)
Seriously, dunno. Insects cannot stand cold very well, tho. Mosquitos kick the bucket at 3.5 degrees centigrade, for instance.
I do know that spiders are the world record holders. Some just stand in a windy spot, create a single windblown thread that gets longer and longer, until it lifts them up into the sky. Amazingly, they have been found up to 13 kilometers up, and are frozen nearly solid, but when they come down again, sometimes even on a different continent, they are okidoki, and resettle. Then again, they are not insects.
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Thanks Rob, yep, I remember seeing a documentary about spiders that do that when I was a wee bairn in school, thanks for the reminder though. I don't know why I asked the question but now that I have I think it would be interesting to find out, though, I don't suppose it's one of those studies that demands action !!..should do though, I think the world needs to know this answer and make it required reading in schools and Universites......much more important than all that physics and biology stuff !![:D]
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Considering flies need to actively stay in the air... wouldn't they be limited by how "thin" the air was since insects rely on direct diffusion of oxygen through their spiracles to respire?
wOw the world spins?
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quote:
Originally posted by Ultima
Considering flies need to actively stay in the air... wouldn't they be limited by how "thin" the air was since insects rely on direct diffusion of oxygen through their spiracles to respire?
wOw the world spins?
I would have thought they might still be able to reach a respectable height......I was in a plane once and did in fact see a fly at 35000ft............but it was also in the plane [:D]
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I think that there are not many living things up high in the atmosphere essentially because there is no food up there, so there is little point going there. Most of the things that are up high are there by accident - I would have thought that quite a lot of insects get sucked up very high by updrafts in thunderstorms, which can go up to 30 000 feet or so.
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hmmm I don't really know about this kind of stuff.... How long does a fly live for? Because I thought some only live for hours..... And some for days... I would have thought they couldn't go high up because of there tiny little wings don't have much stregth and there is quite a lot of wind up high.
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This morning I was trying to take aerial photos with a model airplane, and this a fly hit the lens about 600 ft up. He rode it all the way down, but didn't move the whole time so I presume he died on impact. So it would appear that they fly that high at least.
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We'd love to see pictures if you would care to share them...
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I've encountered insects as high as 10k feet while piloting a sailplane.
I believe that they were caught in thermals and did not intentionally climb to those altitudes though.
My most disturbing encounter was ballooning spiders at about 7k feet.
The wings of my sailplane are white and I saw what look like cracks instantly forming on one of the wings.
Got my heart racing pretty good.
Then one formed along my canopy. There was a little spider at the end of it. Their silk line had just enough contrast to be visible against my wing.