• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

What Is The Highest An Insect Can Fly?

August 27, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

The evolution of flight in insects has seen them take to the skies at incredible sizes and speeds – we’re looking at you, Megaloptera (appropriately enough meaning “large wing”). Flying requires creating lift and for that, you need molecules in the air, something that gets less concentrated the higher up you go. It got us wondering, what’s the highest an insect can fly?

Advertisement

The answer is split into two: the highest we’ve found a flying insect, and the highest we’ve proven an insect could theoretically fly. After all, just because a bee doesn’t want to summit Everest doesn’t mean it couldn’t.

The Guinness World Record for highest flying insect is held by the tortoiseshell butterfly species Aglais urticae. These migrating butterflies have been seen flying over the Zemu Glacier in the eastern Himalayas at an eye-watering altitude of 5,791 meters (19,000 feet). Were they the mountaineering kind they could almost top Kilimanjaro with that talent, but there’s another insect out there theoretically capable of summiting the Roof Of The World.

a tortoiseshell butterfly with brown wings with orange spots resting on a rock

Hold my trekking pole, said the Alpine bee to the tortoiseshell butterfly.

Image credit: Reflex Nature/Shutterstock.com

A group of scientists in Rilong, China, captured male Bombus impetuosus bees at an elevation of around 3,250 meters (10,663 feet) and popped them inside a Plexiglas flight chamber. They then adjusted the barometric pressure within the flight chamber using a hand pump to see how it affected their capacity to hover, which was demonstrated by making controlled, vertical ascents inside the tube.

They did this at regular intervals to assess maximum flight altitude, revealing that the bumblebees could hover at the equivalent air pressure you’d find at an altitude of 9,000 meters (29,528 feet). That’s over 100 meters (328 feet) above the peak of Mount Everest.

an alpine bumblebee resting on a white flower

Behold, the Alpine bumblebee’s fuzzy bumblebutt.

For migrating species like our tortoiseshell butterfly, it’s perhaps less surprising that they might be captured at great heights because it’s possible their annual journey is facilitated by ambient winds. A foraging critter like the humble bumble might therefore be a less likely candidate for flight at such a height, but B. impetuosus tells us otherwise.

Advertisement

“The extreme flight performance under hypobaria documented here is unexpected and suggests that routine hovering, while aerodynamically challenging, should not be viewed as an upper bound to aerial performance,” concluded the study authors.

So, we’ve established they’re good in the air, but how long can insects live?

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Top human rights lawyer leaves Russia, citing criminal case against him
  2. China roundup: Tesla supplier CATL to buy Canada’s Millennial Lithium
  3. Seven Bizarre Animals That Live In The Pacific Garbage Patch
  4. The Winchcombe Meteorite Had A Wet And Wild Journey To Earth

Source Link: What Is The Highest An Insect Can Fly?

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • If Birds Are Dinosaurs, Why Are None As Big As T. Rexes?
  • Psychologists Demonstrate Illusion That Could Be Screwing Up Our Perception Of Time
  • Why Are So Many Enormous Roman Shoes Being Discovered At Hadrian’s Wall?
  • Scientists Think They’ve Pinpointed Structural Differences In Psychopaths’ Brains
  • We’ve Found Our Third-Ever Interstellar Visitor, Orcas Filmed Kissing (With Tongues) In The Wild, And Much More This Week
  • The “Eyes Of Clavius” Will Be Visible On The Moon Today, Thanks To Clair-Obscur Effect
  • Shockingly High Microplastic Levels Found On Remote Mediterranean Coral Reef Island
  • Interstellar Object, Cheesy Nightmares, And Smooching Orcas
  • World’s Largest Martian Meteorite Up For Auction Could Reach Whopping $2-4 Million
  • Kimalu The Beluga Whale Undergoes Pioneering Surgery And Becomes First Beluga To Survive General Aesthetic
  • The 1986 Soviet Space Mission That’s Never Been Repeated: Mir To Salyut And Back Again
  • Grisly Incident In Yellowstone National Park Shows Just How Dangerous This Vibrant Wilderness Can Be
  • Out Of All Greenhouse Gas Emitters On Earth, One US Organization Takes The Biscuit
  • Overly Ambitious Adder Attempts To Eat Hare 10 Times Its Mass In Gnarly Video
  • How Fast Does A Spacecraft Need To Go To Escape The Solar System?
  • President Trump’s Cuts To USAID Could Result In A “Staggering” 14 Million Avoidable Deaths By 2030
  • Dzo: Hybrids Beasts That Are Perfectly Crafted For Life On Earth’s Highest Mountains
  • “Rarest Event Ever” Had A Half-Life 1 Trillion Times Longer Than The Age Of The Universe – How Did We See It?
  • Meet The Bille, A Self-Righting Tetrahedron That Nobody Was Sure Could Exist
  • Neurogenesis Confirmed: Adult Brains Really Do Make New Hippocampal Neurons
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version