Fly as in what birds and aeroplanes do, fly as in the insects, or fly as in “your fly is down”?

edit: I mean the word fly (as in its use in language), not the act of flying!

  • TheMetaleek@sh.itjust.works
    42·
    3 days ago

    Insects fly the same as birds and aeroplanes do, they create air flow around a rounded wing edge, wich causes the air upward of the wing to flow faster than the air under, thus creating a lifting force. And to answer origins, to our knowledge insects were by far the first living flying things, around 300 million years ago with dragonfly relatives. And the group including flies (diptera) came much later, around 240 million years ago !

    • sbird@sopuli.xyzOPEnglish
      3·
      3 days ago

      I meant fly as in the insect you would call a fly (the name, not the act of flying itself). Very cool that insects were the first flying thing though!

        • sbird@sopuli.xyzOPEnglish
          2·
          3 days ago

          Wait a minute, do microorganisms that tracel in the air count as “flying”? Are there any microorganisms with mini “wings” that flap through the air? I remember a video where mayflies (I think that’s the name?) basically swim through the air, so I wonder how a microorganism will do…

          Even if microbes don’t flap little wings, I would argue it still counts as flying as kites are described as flying and they don’t have any wings at all. You also fly in a hot air balloon, and that definitely doesn’t have any wings, it’s effectively floating in air, but we still call it flying. Therefore, microbes are the first flying thing (?)

          • TheMetaleek@sh.itjust.works
            4·
            3 days ago

            Depends on the scale. Really tiny microorganism living in the air do not fly, as in they have no active mecanism to physically interact with their environment to move in any way. They just follow the air currents at seemingly random (the exact word is brownian), kinf of like particles of dust that you see in a ray of light. It is not defined as flying and not studied as such