Drosophila Melanogaster - Flight

Flight

The wings of a fly are capable of beating at up to 220 times per second. Flies fly via straight sequences of movement interspersed by rapid turns called saccades. During these turns, a fly is able to rotate 90 degrees in fewer than 50 milliseconds.

It was long thought that the characteristics of Drosophila flight were dominated by the viscosity of the air, rather than the inertia of the fly body. This view was challenged by research in the lab of Michael Dickinson, which indicated that flies perform banked turns, where the fly accelerates, slows down while turning, and accelerates again at the end of the turn, suggesting that inertia is the dominant force, as is the case with larger flying animals. However, subsequent work showed that while the viscous effects on the insect body during flight may be negligible, the aerodynamic forces on the wings themselves actually cause fruit flies' turns to be damped viscously.