Flies absolutely don’t care what to land on: your monitor glowing in the night, your innocent nose, or the ceiling from which it will not climb down for a long time and stubbornly. Have you ever wondered how a fly stays on the ceiling? Of course, it is difficult to classify it as serious, but curiosity is not a vice. In contrast to the excessive intrusiveness of these insects scurrying around everywhere.
For a long time There was an opinion that numerous hairs on their paws helped them to hold on. Various irregularities on the ceiling supposedly helped these insects to cling to them with their hairs and calmly look at everything that was happening from below with truly universal calm. One could believe it: after all, impeccably even ceiling surfaces appeared only centuries later (read about the most popular modern ceilings for the kitchen).
However, with the development of research instruments and, in particular, microscopes, the theory circulating among ordinary people was smashed to smithereens by the very first in-depth studies of the essence of an unusual issue.
It turns out that there are special glands on the legs of flies that intensively secrete a sticky substance. The pads with which flies cling produce exactly as much glue as the insect needs in order to delight numerous spectators with its presence on the ceiling. Add here its almost negligible weight - and in your mind, like a puzzle, a comprehensive answer to the question of how a fly stays on the ceiling and is practically not afraid of anything will form.
like a fly holds its little paws on the ceiling and got the best answer
Answer from Margosh Milyutin[guru]
Crawling along the ceiling, the fly relies on myriads of thin hairs, which, due to frictional and attractive forces (identical to those of the “gecko” or “spider”), are held among the roughness of the coating. On a completely smooth surface, only adhesion is used.
All these hairs grow from a thin and very flexible spatula that maximizes the contact area by adapting to the surface.
One of important points In hypothetical devices of this kind, the strategy of unsticking is: what to do when you need to not only hang upside down, but also move on?
The answer to this important question was found by Gorb's comrades. They watched hundreds of moments of flies taking off in slow motion video playback. And it turned out that the fly has not one strategy for this, but four.
By moving the legs further from the body, the fly causes the flexible shoulder blades to move in waves and bend, which reduces their contact with the surface and leads to the release of the legs.
The second option is to rotate the leg around an axis perpendicular to the surface, twisting the same sticky “devices”.
The third is the use of small claws at the end of the legs to forcibly tear off the shoulder blades.
The fourth is simply the brute force of the wings' thrust, tearing the entire insect off the ceiling or wall
Reply from ACCESSOR[guru]
Micro bristles for microcracks!! !
There are no suckers there, suckers are the domain of mollusks!! !
And not only on the ceiling, but also on the glass!! !
Good luck!!!
Reply from Fox[guru]
She probably has suction cups on her paws. By the way, there are such frogs...
Reply from KRASAVCHEG RUSSKA I AM!!!®[guru]
Small suction cups on the paws... Learn biology...))))
Reply from User deleted[active]
It seems to me that some kind of sophisticated law of gravity is definitely at work here
Reply from User deleted[guru]
They are sticky. It’s not noticeable to us, but it’s enough for a fly.
Reply from User deleted[guru]
Instead of saliva, she has superglue. You lick your paws and you'll drive away the horseradish. hee hee
Reply from Yaisa[guru]
She has suction cups on her paws
Reply from Bashkirova Svetlana[guru]
Sometimes with great pleasure...
Reply from Oliya Mukhamedshina[newbie]
thanks to the claws and pads at the end of the paws))
Reply from 3 answers[guru]
Hello! Here is a selection of topics with answers to your question: how does a fly stay on the ceiling with its small paws?
Hold on and move around various surfaces Upside down flies are helped by the special structure of their legs, namely several “devices” given by nature.
Paw structure
The fly's foot ends in two claws and fine hairs, as well as glands that secrete an adhesive substance.
At first, scientists believed that the fly, thanks to its tiny claws and hairs, clings to the smallest irregularities or bulges, invisible to the human eye, on any surface. But with the development of science and microscopes, it turned out that special glands on their paws, similar to pads, help insects overcome the force of gravity. At one time, these pads were even considered suction cups.
Over time, it turned out that these were not suckers, but glands. A thousandfold magnification helped to see that they secrete a special sticky liquid in which fats and various sugars are mixed. It is this substance that gives flies the ability to literally stick to any surface, including the ceiling, and not fall. Research activities leads in this area Stanislav Gorb(Stanislav Gorb) from the German Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology (Max-Planck-Institut für Entwicklungsbiologie) as part of the project “Biological Attachment Devices for Biomimetics”.
The fly rubs its paw against its paw to clean its pads from adhering particles of dust and dirt. Otherwise, she will not be able to hold on, since her pads with glands that secrete sticky liquid will be clogged with adhering “garbage”.How does a fly come unstuck?
Everyone knows how difficult it is to catch a fly by surprise. If you swing it a little, it instantly takes off. With a jerk, strictly vertically, it will be very difficult for her to peel off the paw, so nature arranged it in such a way that the pad with the glands lags behind the surface gradually, in small sections. You can compare this to tearing off adhesive tape: if you pull the tape straight up along its entire length, it is almost impossible to tear it off, but gradually peeling the tape off from the surface is much easier. This happens in flies too.
In addition, two claws at the ends of the legs help the insect to peel off the pad after gluing it to the surface.
They penetrate everywhere and cause some discomfort to people. Natural agility, allowing 360-degree vision, and many other features, allow the insect to maintain its life and instantly respond to danger. The question of how a fly lands on the ceiling worries not only children, but also adults. For this purpose, nature has endowed it with some features.
What surface can it sit on?
The fly easily sticks to any surface. It can be horizontal, vertical, vertical. It doesn't even slide off glass or anything else. smooth surfaces. If we consider the option of how a fly stays on a ceiling with wallpaper or other finishing, we can assume that the coating is imperfect.
For small insect legs, any, even very small, tubercle becomes an excellent way to gain a foothold. But it won’t even slide off the same surface, but made of perfectly smooth glass.
Why doesn't a fly fall from the ceiling?
It is very easy to reveal this secret if you look at the structure of her paws through a microscope. A close-up shot will show the following features:
- Presence of 2 claws. They allow her to grab onto microscopic protrusions and hold on for a long time.
- Suckers. They are located at the base of the claws. The suction cup is made in the form of a small pad. On its outer side, the pads are overgrown with ordinary hairs; on the other side, the hairs have very small disc-shaped suckers.
- Sticky substance. At the end of the front legs, a special substance is released during landing. It's sticky and greasy. It is this that allows the individual to hang above the ground and not fall. Exactly enough sticky mixture is released so that it is enough to hold the individual, but not to impede its movement.
Interesting!
An interesting experiment was carried out by researchers. They laid special filter paper for the insects, which quickly and effectively absorbs any fat. As a result, the substance secreted by the flies was quickly absorbed, and the flies could not gain a foothold.
Soft landing: detailed analysis
To give a better idea of how the landing occurs and why the fall does not occur, consideration of the behavior of the individual at the moment of landing will allow. During the flight, she easily performs various complex pirouettes, which allow her to securely attach to any materials.
Interesting!
The insect does not fly forward, like many others that fly, but backward. Therefore, to kill him, you should aim a little behind.
The fly lands on the ceiling from a loop or from a flip. As a result, it transfers the center of gravity to the front and sticks to the ceiling with its paws. The rest of the body catches up with the front part and seals the fly even tighter.
What macro photography showed
An amazing discovery was made by macro photography observing the behavior of the fly. The insect does not push off from the ceiling to fly. It just relaxes, lets go of the surface and falls down. Then the fly quickly turns over with its belly down, spreads its wings and...
