A ladybird beetle spreading its wings captured with a high-speed camera. In real-time wing deployment from the fully folded state takes less than 0.1 seconds.Video credit: University of Tokyo / Saito et al. 'Investigation of hindwing folding in ladybird beetles.' DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1620612114. pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas#nature #photography #science

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[–] 1 point 1 year ago

@wonderofscience the folding of beetle wings fascinates me. I assume it's done by pumping fluids in and out of vascular canals in the wings, but the deployment part is easy. Engineering the wings so that they will fit precisely under the (much smaller) wing cases strikes me as a much harder problem. And yet all the species of beetle, with all their differently shaped wing cases, do it apparently reliably. Evolution is astonishing!

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