/ David Pescovitz / 10:49 am Tue Jun 5, 2012

How mosquitos survive rain

Above is what happens when a water droplet, like from rain, smashes into a mosquito mid-air. How does the insect handle the collision? New research shows that the mosquito actually "rides the drop" down. From Science News:
The trick is breaking away from that drop before it and the insect splash into the ground. Mosquitoes that separate themselves in time easily survive a raindrop strike, Hu and his colleagues report online June 4 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Such studies help reveal how animals evolved to take advantage of flight, says biologist Tyson Hedrick of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Mosquito tricks may also inspire engineers designing swarms of tiny flying robots, or interest physicists and mathematicians studying complex fluid dynamics at this scale.

"How a mosquito survives a raindrop hit"

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  2. oh, good. we don’t have much control over the climate. but at least we have the prospect of ‘swarms of tiny flying robots’ to look forward to

  3. I have always wondered this, not specifically about mosquitos, but about smaller insects in general.   Looks like surface tension at that scale is an issue that might help at well.  It s funny to scale up and think of a ball of water this size hitting a human regularly.  Don t think they would deal with it as well.

  4. A question that crosses many minds.

    If I was a mosquito, the idea of laying underneath leafs, stems , hollow logs and what shelter there is during mid/heavy rain, would be capital.

    1. I think they actually do this, but they still get caught in the open quite a lot. If their bad weather alarm system had such a hair trigger that they never faced rain, they’d miss out on some prime biting conditions. And what about the tastiest prey of all. kids playing in the sprinkler?

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