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CrowdScience: How do butterflies and moths fly?

Discussion & Talk

How do butterflies and moths fly?

25/08/2023 GMT

BBC World Service - CrowdScience, How do butterflies and moths fly?

Why do butterflies and moths fly so erratically, but land so precisely?

Why do butterflies and moths fly so erratically and yet so precisely? And how is it possible that these tiny insects can migrate thousands of miles across the world?

For hundreds of millions of years insects controlled the skies. Before birds, bats and pterodactyls, insects were the only creatures that had evolved the ability to fly: a miracle of physics and physiology requiring their bodies to act in coordinated ballet.  

This week three separate CrowdScience listeners have been asking questions about the flight of butterflies and moths. How do they move so erratically, yet land so precisely? What makes such tiny insects such accurate flyers? 

Presenter Anand Jagatia -- not the biggest fan of either butterflies or moths -- visits Butterfly Paradise at London Zoo to meet keeper Mark Tansley. Anand tries to get over his aversion by immersing himself in fluttering creatures.  

He then meets insect flight expert Sanjay Sane to learn the hidden mechanics behind their aeronautical skills: the vortexes of air generated by their wings and the complex muscle architecture inside their torsos. Next, aerospace engineer Amy Lang explains how the scales on their wings reduce air resistance by clever manipulation of the air and how this function trades off against other uses of the scales: for colour, for keeping dry, and much more. 

All of these abilities are put to the test during the incredible global migrations that some butterflies undertake. Gerard Talavera tells Anand how he turned previous thinking about butterfly migration across Africa on its head.  

Presenter: Anand Jagatia 
Producer: Phil Sansom 
Voiceover: Kitty O’Sullivan 
Production Coordinator: Jonathan Harris 
Editor: Richard Collings

(Photo: Crowdscience presenter Anand Jagatia crouches next to a butterfly. Credit: Phil Sansom)

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