How military might benefit from study of hard-to-kill mosquitoes

Mosquitoes, it turns out, are surprisingly adept at surviving collisions with heavy raindrops, an ability, say researchers, that could help engineer a new generation of tiny flying drones.

• 

By Pete Spotts,  Did you ever wonder what happens to mosquitoes caught in a rainstorm? If a big, fat raindrop smashes into a delicate flying mosquito, the bug is toast, right?                                       Not if recent experiments by a team of engineers and biologists are any indication. The researchers found that mosquitoes are adept at surviving such collisions, and their work sheds light on why.That’s good news for mosquitoes, and, say the researchers, it could be useful for humans.The information could feed into designs for a new generation of tiny robotic fliers tailored for military-reconnaissance or for search-and-rescue work, says David Hu, a mechanical engineer at Georgia Tech in Atlanta who led the effort. The results appeared Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences...Continue reading...