Wild Things:
Life as We Know It
Butterflies, clicking antelopes, creatures of the deep and more
- By Amanda Bensen, T.A. Frail, Megan Gambino, Anika Gupta and Abigail Tucker
- Smithsonian magazine, January 2009
A study shows that cabbage white butterflies with their hindwings removed could fly as far and as high as before. (JoeLena / iStockPhoto)
Why do butterflies have two sets of wings? Not to stay aloft, it turns out. Scientists from Carnegie Mellon and Cornell found that cabbage white butterflies with their hindwings removed could fly as far and as high as before. But they were slower to turn. This suggests hindwings are the key to aerial agility, a trait that helps butterflies evade hungry birds.
Additional Sources
"The thermohaline expressway: the Southern Ocean as a centre of origin for deep-sea octopuses," Jan M. Strugnell et al., Cladistics, November 11, 2008
"Knee-clicks and visual traits indicate fighting ability in eland antelopes: multiple messages and back-up signals," Jakob Bro-Jørgensen and Torben Dabelsteen, BMC Biology, November 5, 2008
"Sea Snakes (Laticauda spp.) Require Fresh Drinking Water: Implication for the Distribution and Persistence of Populations," Harvey B. Lillywhite et al., Physiological and Biochemical Zoology, November/December 2008
"Hindwings are unnecessary for flight but essential for execution of normal evasive flight in Lepidoptera," Benjamin Jantzen and Thomas Eisner, PNAS, October 28, 2008
"Daytime micro-naps in a nocturnal migrants: an EEG analysis," T. Fuchs et al., Biology Letters, November 5, 2008
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Comments (2)
This is great information for my project thnx <3
Posted by Jacqueline Molina on March 30,2011 | 06:15 PM
Although I had lived in Kenya for 30 years, I had never heard eland knees click. Thanks for recording this extraordinary bit of natural information. I wonder if my son who works near Masai Mara has ever heard this??!!
Posted by Ann Goss on April 19,2010 | 07:48 PM