Come fly with me, let’s fly, let’s fly away!

Yaysies! I have another request: How do bugs walk across the ceiling without falling down?

Obviously this answer will depend on the bug. Mechanisms for staying on the ceiling can range from suction cups to microscopic little claws. I want to take this a step further and talk about one bug – let’s be correct, an insect – the common housefly.

Picture that annoying little fly buzzing around your house. It’s flying along, right-side up and then it decides to land on the ceiling. You (and for a really long time, a lot of scientists) would think they just do a quick barrel roll and land. Well high speed cameras can prove you wrong.

I think this is actually really badass. A fly will fly close to the ceiling and scout out an ideal landing spot. When it finds one, the fly throws its front legs up over its head and uses them to grab hold of the ceiling. Once it has a good grip, it summersaults over its front legs and then attaches its back legs to the ceiling as well. The fly lands facing the opposite direction it was flying. Now picture how fast this needs to happen - and also that the fly needs to continuously beat its wings around 300 times per second to even keep in flight.

Once it lands, the fly has two footpads (pulvilli) that secrete a sticky substance that holds the fly to the ceiling. Little tiny hairs on the footpads (setae) also help.

Simple, but still pretty sweet.

Now you know that the next time you want to kill a fly, wait until right after it lands. I’m sure they get a little dizzy and disoriented when flipping over like that.