A ‘Sea Butterfly’ Swims the Same Way Insects Fly

Sea butterflies are snails that have invert themselves . Instead of using their pulp ( via a foot ) to cower on the sea floor , they turned upside down and make their protruding bodies into “ wings . ” When scientists study this strange apparent movement , they set up the sea butterfliesmove exactly like fruit fliesand other small insects .

Ina new newspaper publisher inthe Journal of Experimental Biology , researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology identify their investigation into how the sea butterfly stroke ride out afloat . The sea butterfly stroke ( and the insects ) wing using what the researchers describe as “ the well - known Weis - Fogh ‘ blast - and - offer ’ mechanism . ” It ’s fundamentally a figure eight radiation diagram .

First the snail claps its flank together at the top of its stroke . Instead of keeping the extension rigid and deplume them down and apart ( which would move the water under the wings and no more ) , they peel the wings apart . or else of pushing water supply with their wing , they suck water down between their wings . This deracination of urine induce vortices of low - pressure H2O to form right at the wing backsheesh , and it ’s the whirl that pull the snail up .

dirt ball and ocean snail split off from each other pretty early , in full term of phylogeny . Their physiology , their surround , and physics , cause them to develop the same strategy for getting around .

“ No one has actually been able-bodied to appraise the flow around an insect doing this while it is flying , and so that was kind of the holy Holy Grail of this field of research , ’ co - author David Murphysaid in a assertion . “ It really surprise me that sea butterflies turned out to be honorary insects . ”

[ Journal of Experimental Biology , Bizarre Snail That swim Like a Flying Insect ]

William Duplessie