LOUIE'S FLYING FLYBARS

What on earth are ‘halteres’?......or more to the point: what in the air are ‘halteres’?

Don’t you know??                                    
Come on, everyone knows what a haltere is……..(not really)
We had never heard of them either until just recently; in fact, how do you pronounce the word?...perhaps it’s: ‘halt airs’?

Take a look at this tipulid fly.

Can you see those little knobby arms sticking out from its thorax (chest), behind the wings? Notice how they are carefully aligned at right angles to each other and 45 degrees to the body. Diptera insects such as flies, mosquitoes and gnats have these halteres or ‘vibrating structure gyroscopes’, with tiny sensors called campaniform sensilla at the base which inform the insect of spatial orientation and movement during flight. In other words, this is the balance system and like all good aviators, it will refuse to fly if this vital equipment is rendered unserviceable.  

So why are they called halteres?  Athletes in Ancient Greece used to handcraft their own halteres (dumbbells) from stone and use them in long jump competitions – make your own rules of course. 

Hang on a minute, the connection is obvious with weighted arms but the main benefit for the athlete was extra propulsion, not so much balance or stability.

Okay, so where have we seen something like this before that also relies on Newton’s First Law of Motion?

Bell 47D

Got it! Have you ever noticed those extra little rotors called ‘flybars’ that some helicopters have? They stabilize the main rotor by automatically changing the cyclic pitch, reducing the effect of turbulence and improving controllability.  Arthur Young used this device in developing the Bell helicopter while Stanley Hiller Jr. patented a similar device.

Come to think of it – how can something just ‘evolve’ in nature then be patented as an ingenious design by Man who then profits by millions of dollars?

So next time you miss Louie the fly with the fly-swat, at least admire his aerobatics thanks to this marvel of aeronautical design from the Engineer who thought of flybars first.

You might like to hear Dr. Carl Wieland explain ‘why a fly can fly like a fly’, by going to: http://creation.com/why-a-fly-can-fly-like-a-fly

Acknowledgements:
wikipedia.com
Photo credits:
amentsoc.org
Bell 47D / flickr.com                                                                                                                                                             fiddlersgreen.net