Come Fly With Me
OK, everyone, so today we are going to talk about the birds and the bees . . . no, not that!! I mean these little guys!!
Birds do it . . .
Bees do it . . .
Even educated seeds do it . . .
I am sure most of us have had dreams where we could fly simply by flapping our arms, but great as that would be, as is often the case, Nature was way ahead of humankind in terms of flying ability.
Flapping, soaring, gliding, hovering, parascending, ballooning, even the ability to fly backwards - there is nothing we have done that an animal, or indeed plant, has not done first.
The helicopter motion of maple and sycamore seeds as they fall enables them, with a favourable wind, to land quite some way from the parent plant. This gives them a greater chance of survival as they won’t be competing directly with their parent tree for light, water and nutrients.
Flying squirrels do not actually fly, but instead use flaps of skin between their legs to glide from tree to tree.
Bats are the only mammal to have naturally mastered true flight!
Spiders use a technique known as “ballooning”. Due to storm activity, the Earth’s atmosphere has a positive electrical charge, while the ground and things connected to it have a negative charge. Spiders can sense when these electrical charges are at their strongest - during stormy or foggy weather - and they climb up grass or twigs, which protrude into the air and are where the electrical fields are stronger still, and they exude strands of silk. These strands carry the same negative charge as the surface they are on, and that helps them repel themselves off the negatively charged ground and into the positively charged air. Light winds can then carry them two and a half miles into the air and over 1,000 miles in distance.
Birds’ feathers are a wonder of evolutionary design. How many of us have run our fingers along those separated barbs and watched them magically “zip” back together thanks to the tiny hooks on their sides?
So, we humans have watched the birds, and the bees, and the bats, and the butterflies, and tried to recreate flight for ourselves.
Have you flown in any way? Do you enjoy flying or does it scare you?
Is there a way you would like to fly?
Please share any thoughts you may have on flight of any kind.
And please feel free to share any pictures, videos, gifs or music to do with flying things, whether natural or manmade, real or fantasy!!
All are welcome. And please feel free to recommend and share all discussions you enjoy.
There is no obligation to follow any of our informal themes. They are simply for fun. This is an open topic chat thread, so please just post or talk about anything you like!